
Olassil 
Book5 



/ 



OF THE PASSAGES IN THE 

NEW TESTAMENT, 

QUOTED FROM THE OLD AND CALLED PROPHECIES CON 
CERNING 

Jesus Christ. 

to Which is prefixed, 

An ESSAY on DREAM, 

Shewing by what operation of the mind a Dream is produced in sleeps 
and applying the same to the account of Dreams in tlie 

New Testament ; 

With an APPENDIX containing my 

Private Thoughts of a Future State^ 

And REMARKS on the Contradictory Doctrine in the Books of 
MATTHEW and MAI 



By Thomas Paine, 

NEW-YORK: 
PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR, 



"TfT 



To the Ministers and Preachers of all 
Denominations of Religion. 

IT is the duty of every man, as far as his ability extends, to 
detect and expose delusion and error. But nature has not given 
to every one a talent for the purpose ; and among those to whom 
such a talent is given, there is often a want of disposition or of 
courage to do it. 

The world, or more properly speaking, that small part of it 
called Christendom, or the christian world, lias hem amused for 
more than a thousand years with accounts of Prophecies in the 
Old-Testament, about the coming of the person called Jesus 
Christ, and thousands of sermons have been preached, and vol- 
umes written, to make man believe it. 

In the following treatise 1 have examined all the passages in the 
New-Testament, quoted from the old and called prophecies con- 
cerning Jesus Christ, and I find no such thing as a prophecy of any 
such person, and I deny there are any. The passages all relate 
to circumstances, the Jewish nation was in at the time they were 
written or spoken, and not to any thing that was, or was not, to 
happen in the world several hundred years afterwards ; and I have 
shewn what the circumstances were, to which the passages apply 
or^ refer. I have given chapter and verse for every thing I have 
said, and have not gone out of the books of the Old and New- 
Testament for evidence, that the passages are not proohecies of 
the person called Jesus Christ. 

The prejudice of unfounded belief often degenerates into the 
prejudice of custom, and becomes at last, rank hypocrisy. When 
men from custom or fashion or ar v worldly motive profess, or pre- 
tend to believe, what they do not believe, nor can give any reason 
for believing, they unship the helm of their morality, and being 
no longer honest to their own minds, they feel no moral difficulty 
m being unjust to others. Jt is from the influence of this vice, hy- 
pocrisy that we see so many church and meeting goinff profes- 
sors and pretenders to religion, so full of trick and deceit in their 
dealings, and so loose in the performance of their engagements, 
that they are not to be trusted further than the laws of the country 
w.l bin dthem. Morality has no hold on their minds, no restraint 
on their actions. 



PREFACE. 

One set of preachers make salvation to consist in believing. 
They tell their congregations that if they believe in Christ their 
sins shall be forgiven. This, in the first place, is an encourage- 
ment to sin, in a similar manner, as when a prodigal young fellow 
is told his father will pay all his debts, he runs into debt the faster 
and becomes the more extravagant ; Daddy, says he,pays all,and on 
he goes. Just so in the other case, Christ pays all and on goes the 
sinner. 

In the next place, the doctrine these men preach is not true. 
Th e JMew-Testament rests itself for credibility and testimony on 
what are called prophecies in the Old-Testament, of the person 
called Jesus Christ, and if there are no such thing as prophecies 
of any such person in the Old-Testament, the New-Testament is 
a forgery of the Councils of Nice and Laodocia and the faith 
founded thereon, delusion and falsehood.* 

Another set of preachers tell their congregations that God pre- 
destinated and selected from all eternity, a certain number to be 
saved, and a certain number to be damned eternally. If this were 
true the day of Judgment is past, their preaching is in vain, and 
they had better work at some useful calling for their livelihood. 

This doctrine also like the former hath a direet tendency to de- 
moralize mankind. Can a bad man be reformed by telling him 
that if he is one of those who was decreed to be damned before he 
was bom his reformation will do him no good; and if he was de- 
creed to be saved, he will be saved whether he believes it or not, 
for this is the result of the doctrine. Such preaching and such 
preachers do injury to the moral world. They had better be at 
the plough. 

As in my political works my motive and object have been to 
give man an elevated sense of his own character, and to free him 
from the slavish and superstitious absurdity of monarchy and hered* 
itary government, so in my publications on religious subjects my 
endeavours have been directed to bring man to a right use of the 
reason that God has given him, to impress on him the great prin- 
ciples of divine morality, justice mercy and a benevolent disposi- 
tion to all men, and to all creatures, and to inspire in him a spirit of 
trust, confidence, and consolation in his creator, unshackled by the 
fables of books pretending to be the word of God. 

* THOMAS PAINE. 



* The councils of Nice and Laodocia were held about 350 
vears after the time Christ is said to have lived, and the books, 
that now compose the New-Testament, were then voted for by 
yeas and nays, as we now vote a law. A great many that were 
©ffered had a majority of nays and were rejected. # This is the 
way the New-Testament came into being. 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 



AS a great deal is said In the New Testament about dreams, 
it is first necessary to explain the nature of dream, and to shew by 
what operation of the mind a dream is produced during sleep. 
When this is understood we shall be the better enabled to judge 
whether any reliance can be placed upon them; and consequently, 
whether the several matters in the New Testament related of 
dreams deserve the credit which the writers of that book and 
priests and commentators ascribe to them. 



An ESSAY on Dream. 

N order to understand the nature of dream, or of that which 
passes in ideal vision during a state of sleep, it is first necessary to 
understand the composition and decomposition of the human mind. 

The three great faculties of the mind are imagination, judg- 
ment and memory. Every action of the mind comes under one 
or other of these faculsies. In a state of wakefulness, as in the 
day time, these three faculties are all active ; but that is seldom 
the sase in sleep, and never perfectly ; and this is the cause that 
•ur dreams are not so regular and rational as our waking thoughts. 

The seat of that collection of powers or faculties that constitute 
what is called the mind is in the brain. There is not, and cannot 
be, any visible demonstration of this anatomically, but accidents 
happening to living persons, shew it to be so. An injury done to 
the brain by a fracture of the scull will sometimes change a wise 



J AN ESSAY 

man into a childish idiot ; a being without a mind. But so cafe» 
ful has nature been of that sanctum sanctorum of man, the brain, 
that of all the external accidents to which humanity is subject, 
this happens the most seldom. But we often see it happening by 
long and habitual intemperance. 

Whether those three faculties occupy distinct apartments of the 
brain, is known only to that almighty power that formed and or- 
ganised it. We can see the external effects of muscular motion 
in all the members of the body, though its primum mobile, or first 
moving cause, is unknown to man. Our external motions are 
sometimes the effect of intention, and sometimes not. If we are 
sitting and intend to rise, or standing and intend to sit, or to walk, 
the limbs obey that intention as if they heard the order given. But 
we make a thousand motions every day, and that as well waking 
as sleeping, that have no prior intention to direct them. Each 
member acts as if it had a will, or mind of its own. Man governs 
the whole when he please to govern, but in the interims the se- 
veral parts, like little suburbs, govern themselves without consult- 
ing the sovereign. 

But all these motions, whatever be the genrating cause, are ex- 
ternal and visible. But with respect to the brain, no occular ob- 
servation can be made upon it. All is mystery ; all is darkness, 
in that womb of thought. 

Whether the brain is a mass of matter in continual rest; whe- 
ther it has a vibrating pulsative motion, or a heaving and falling 
motion like matter in fermentation ; whether different parts of the 
brain have different motions according to the faculty that is em- 
ployed, be it the imagination, the judgment, or the memory, man 
knows nothing of. He knows not the cause of his own wit. His 
own brain conceals it from him. 

Comparing invisible by visible things, as metaphysical can some^ 
times be compared to physical things, the operations of these dis= 



ON DREAM. 4 

iincfc and several Faculties have some resemblance to the mechan- 
ism of a watch. The main spring, which puts all in motion, cor- 
responds to the imagination ; the pendulum, or balance, which 
corrects and regulates that motion, corresponds to the judgment, 
and the hand and dial, like the memory, record the operations. 

Now in proportion as these several faculties sleep, slumber, or 
keep awake, during the continuance of a dream, in that propor- 
tion will the dream be reasonable or frantic, remembered or for 
gotten. 

If there is any faculty in mental man that never sleeps it is that 
volatile thing the imagination. The case is different with the 
judgment and memory. The sedate and sober constitution of the 
judgment easily disposes it to rest, and as to the memory it records 
m silence and is active only when it is called upon. 

That the judgement soon goes to sleep may be perceived by our 
sometimes- beginning to dream before we are fully asleep ourselves. 
Some random thought runs in the mind, and we start, as it were, 
into recollection that we are dreaming between sleeping and wak- 
ing. 

If the judgment sleeps whilst the imagination keeps awake, the 
dream will be a riotous assemblage of misshapen images and ranting 
ideas, and the more active the imagination is the wilder the dream 
will be. The most inconsistent and the most impossible things 
will appear right ; because that faculty whose province it is to 
keep order is in a state of absence. The master of the school is 
gone out and the boys are in an uproar. 

If the memory sleeps we shall have no other knowledge of the 
dream than that we have dreamt, without knowing what it was 
about. In this case it is sensation rather than recollection that 
acts. The dream has given us some sense of pain or trouble, and 
,we feel it as a hurt, rather than remember it as a vision, 



i- AN ESSAY 

If memory only slumbers we shall have a faint remembrance of 
the dream, and after a few minutes it will sometimes happen that 
the principal passages of the dream will occur to us more fully ^ 
Tne cause of this is that the memory will sometimes continue slum- 
bering or sleep ng atter we are awake ourselves, and that so fully, 
that it ma), ana sometimes cio, happen, that we do not immedi- 
ately recollect whtre we are, nor what we have been about, or 
have to do. But when the memory starts into wakefulness it brings 
the knowledge of these things back upon us, like a flood of light, 
anu sometimes the dream with it. 

But the most curious circumstance of the mind in a state of dream, 
is tne power it nas to become tne agent oi every person, cnaracter 
and tiimg, of whicti it dreams, li carries on conversation with 
several, asks questions, hears ausweis, gives and receives inform- 
ation, and it acts ail these parts itself. 

But howev r various and eccentric the imagination ma} be in 
the creatjon ot images and ideas, it cannot suppl) tiie place of me- 
mory, with respect to tilings that are forgotten vvnen we are awake. 
For example, if we have forgotten the name of a person, and 
dream of seeing him, and asking him Iris name, he cannot tell it; 
for it is ourselves asking ourselves the question. 

But though the imagination cannot supply the place of real me- 
mory it has tht wild faculty of counterfeiting memory. It dreams 
of persons it never knew, and talks with them as it it remember- 
ed them as old acquaintances. It relates circumstances that never 
happened, and tells them as if they had happened. It goes to 
places that never existed, and knows where all the streets and 
houses areas if it had been there before. The scenes it creates 
often appear as scenes remembered. It will sometimes act a 
dream within a dream, and in the delusion of dreaming tell a 
dream it never dreamed and tell it as if it was from memory. It 
may also be remarked, that the imagination, in a dream, has no 



ON DREAM, 5 

idea of time, as time. It counts only by circumstances ; and if a 
succession of circumstances pass in a dream that would require a 
great length of time to accomplish them, it will appear to the 
dreamer that a length of time equal thereto has passed also. 

As this is the state of the mind in dream it may rationally be 
said that every person is mad once in twenty-four hours, for were 
he to act in the day as he dreams in the night he would be con- 
fined for a lunatic. In a state of wakefulness those three faculties 
being all active and acting in unison constitute the rational man. 
In dream it is otherwise, and therefore that state which is called 
insanity appears to be no other than a disunion of those faculties 
and a cessation of the judgment, during wakefulness, that we so 
often experience during sleep ; and idiocity, into which some per- 
sons have fallen, is that cessation of all the faculties of which we 
can be sensible when we happen to wake before ourmemory. 

In this view of the mind how absurd is it to place reliance upon 
dreams, and how more absurd to make them a foundation for re- 
ligion ; yet the belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God, begot- 
ten by the holy ghost, a being never heard of before, stands on 
the story of an old man's dream. " And behold the angel of the 
e( Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of 
" David, ftar not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is 
" conceived in her is of the holy ghost." Matt. ch. 1, v. 20. 

After this we have the childish stories of three or four other 
dreams ; about Joseph going into Egypt ; about his coming back 
again ; about this, and about that, and this story of dreams has 
thrown Europe into a dream for more than a thousand years. All 
the efforts that nature, reason, and conscience have made to a- 
waken man from it have been ascribed by priestcraft and supersti- 
tion to the workings of the devil, and had it not been for the Ame- 
rican revolution, which by establishing the universal right of con- 
science, first opened the way to free discussion, and for the French 
revolution which followed, this religion of dreams had continued 



I AN ESSAY 

to be preached, and that after it had ceased to be believed. Those 
who preached it and did not believe it, still believed the delusion 
necessary. They were not bold enough to be honest, nor honest 
enough to be bold. 

I shall conclude this Essay on Dream with the two first verses 
of the 36 chapter of Ecclesiasticus one of the books of the Apo- 
crypha. 

v. I. ei The hopes of a man void of understanding are tain and 
"fake ; and dreams lift up fools. — Whoso regardeth dreams is like 
et him that catcheth at a shadow, andfolloiveth after the wind." 

I now proceed to an examination of the passages in the bible call- 
ed prophecies of the coming of Christ, and to shew there are no 
prophecies of any such person. That the passages clandestinely 
stiled prophecies are not prophecies, and that they refer to circum- 
stances tne Jewish nation was in at the time they were written or 
spoken, and not to any distant or future time or person. 

THOMAS PAINE, 



AN 



OF THE 



Passages in the New Testament^ 

QUOTED FROM THE OLD AND CALLED PROPHECIES OF THE 
COMING OF 

JESUS CHRIST. 



HE passages called Prophecies of, or concerning, Jesus Christ 
in the Old Testament may be classed under the two following 
heads. 

First, those referred to in the four books of the New Testament, 
called the four Evangelists, Mattheiv, Mark, Luke and John. 

Secondly, those which translators and commentators, have, of 
their own imagination, erected into prophecies and dubbed with 
that title at the head of the several chapters of the Old Testa- 
ment. Of these it is scarcely worth while to waste time, ink and 
paper upon, I shall therefore confine myself chiefly so those referred 
to in the aforesaid four books of the New Testament. If I shew r ihat 
these are not prophesies of the person called Jesus Christ, nor have 
reference to any such person, it will be perfectly needless to com- 
bat those which translators or the church have invented, and for 
which they had no other authority than their own imagination. 



$ AN EXAMINATION OF THE PASSAGES 

I begin with the book called the gospel according to St. Mat- 
thew. 

In the first cli3p. v. 18, it is said " now the birth of Jesus Christ 
* c was in this wise : when as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, 
" before they came together, she was found with child by; 
" the holy ghost." — This is going a little too fast ; because to 
make this verse agree with the next, it should have said no more 
than that she was found with child ; for the next verse says, " Then 
"Joseph her husband being a just man, and not willing to make her a 
H public example, zvas minded to put her away privately." — Conse- 
quently Joseph had found out no more than that she was with child, 
and he knew it was not by himself. 

v. 20. " And while he thought of these things" (that is, whether 
lie should put her away privately, or make a public example of her) 
4r behold the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream," (that 
is, Joseph dreamed that an angel appeared unto him) " saying, 
"Joseph, thou son of David fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, 
"for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she 
hall bring forth a son and call his name Jesus, for he shall save his 

people from their sins" 



" s 
n 



Now without entering into any discussion upon the merits or de- 
merits of the account here given, it is proper to observe, that it has 
no higher authority than that of a dream; for it is impossible to a 
man to behold any thing in a dream but that which he dreams of. 
I ask not, therefore, whether Joseph, if there were such a man, had 
such a dream or not, because, admitting he had, it proves nothing, 
So wonderful and irrational is the faculty of the mind in dream, 
that it acts the part of all the characters its imagination creates, 
and what it thinks it hears from any of them is no other than what 
the roving rapidity of its own imagination invents. It is therefore 
nothing to me what Joseph dreamed of; whether of the fidelity or 
Infidelity of his wife ; I pay no regard to my own dreams, and 
I should be weak indeed to put faith in the dreams of another. 



IN THE NEW TESTAMENT, V 

The verses that follow those I have quoted, are the words of the 
writer of the book of Matthew. " Now (says he) all this (that is 
H all this dreaming and this pregnancy) was done that it might be 
"fulfilled zvhich zvas spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying. 

" Behold a Virgin shall he with child, and shall bring forth a son, 
" and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which, being interpreted^ 
" is God with us." 

This passage is in Isaiah, chap. 7, v. 14. and the writer of the 
book of Matthew endeavours to make his readers believe that this 
passage is a prophecy of the person called Jesus Christ. It is no 
such thing ; and I go to shew it is not. But it is first necessary 
that I explain the occasion of these words being spoken by Isaiah. 
The reader will then easily perceive that so far from their being a 
prophecy of Jesus Christ, they have not the least reference to such 
a person, nor to any thing that could happen in the time that Christ 
is said to have lived, which was about seven hundred years after 
the time of Isaiah. The case is this, 

On the death of Solomon the Jewish nation split into two monar- 
chies ; one called the kingdom of Judah, the capital of which was 
Jerusalem ; the other the kingdom of Israel, the capital of which 
was Samaria. The kingdom of Judah followed the line of David, 
and the kingdom of Israel that of Saul ; and these two rival mo- 
narchies frequently carried on fierce wars against each other. 

At the time Ahaz was king of Judah, which was in the thv.e oi 
Isaiah, Pekah was king of Israel; and Pekah joined himself to 
Rezin, king of Syria, to make war against Ahaz, king of Judah, 
and these two kings marched a confederated and powerful army 
against Jerusalemn. Ahaz and his people became alarmed at the 
danger, and " their hearts were moved as the trees of the wood are 
* moved with thezvind.^ Isaiah chap. 7, v. 2. 

In this perilous situation of things Isaiah addresses himself to 



10 AN EXAMINATION 0*F THE PASSAGES 

Ahaz, and assures him in the name of the Lord, (the cant phrase 
of all the prophets) that these two kings should not succeed against 
him ; and to assure him that this should be the case (the case how- 
ever was directly contrary,*) tells Ahaz to ask a sign of the Lord. 
This Ahaz declined doing, giving as a reason that he would not 
tempt the Lord ; upon which Isaiah, who pretends to be sent from 
God, says, v. 14, "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you 
i( a sign, behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son — Butter and 
"honey shall he eat that he may know to refuse the evil andchuse 
Sf the good— For before the child shall know to refuse the evil and 
l\ chuse the good, the land which thou abhorrest shall be forsaken 
u of both her kings," meaning the king of Israel and the king, of 
Syria who were marching against him. 

Here then is the sign, which was to be the birth of a child, and 
that child a son ; and here also is the time limited for the accom- 
plishment of the sign, namely, before the child should know to 
refuse the 1 evil and chuse the goodi, 

The tiling therefore to be a sign of success to Ahaz must be 
something that would take place before the event of the battle then 
pending between him and the two kings could be known. A thing 
to be a sign must precede the tiling signified. The sign of raia 
must be before' the rain. 

It would have been mockery and insulting nonsense for Isaiah 



* Chron. chap. 28. v. 1st. Ahaz zvas tzventy years old when he 
began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in J erus~alemn, but he did 
not that which ivas right in the sight of the Lord. — v. 5. Wherefore 
the Lord his God delivered him into the hand of the king of Syria, and 
they smote him, and carried away a great multitade of them captive 
and brought them to Damascus, and he zvas also delivered into the hand 
of the king of Israel, who smote him zvith a great slaughter, 

v. 6. And Pek'ah (king of Israel) slezv in Judah an hundred and 
tiventy thousandtn one day.— v. 8. And the children of Israel carried 
azvay captive of their brethren two hundred thousand women^ sons and 
daughters. 



JN THE NEW TESTAMENT. I* 

lo have assured Ahaz as a sign that these two kings should not pre- 
vail against him, that a child should be born seven hundred years 
after he was dead, and that before the child so born should know 
to refuse the evil and choose the good, he, Ahaz, should be deli- 
vered from the danger he was then immediately threatened with. 

But the case is, that the child of which Isaiah speaks was his 
own child, with which his wife or his mistress was then pregnant, 
for he says in the next chapter, v. 2, " and I took unto me faith- 
* l ful witnesses to record, Uriah the priest, and Zechariah the son of 
" Jeberechiah, and I went unto the prophetess and she conceived and 
■!' bear a son" and he says at 18 v. of the same chapter, " Behold I 
" and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for 
y wonders in Israel." 

It may not be improper here to observe that the word translate^ 
a virgin in Isaiah does not signify a virgin in Hebrew, but merely 
a young woman. The Tense also is falsified in the translation. 
Levi gives the Hebrew text of tjie 14 v. of the 7 th chapter of Isaiah 
and the translation in English with it — " Behold a young woman. 
"is with child and heareth a son.'* The expression, says he, is 
in the present tense. This translation agrees with the other cir- 
cumstances related of the birth of this child which was to be a sign 
to Ahaz. But as the true translation could not have been im- 
posed upon the world as a prophecy of a child to be born seven 
hundred years afterwards, the christian translators have falsified 
the original ; and instead of making Isaiah to say behold a young 
woman is with child and beareih a son, they have made him to 
say, Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son." It is, how- 
ever, only necessary for a person to read the 7 th and 8 th chapters 
of Isaiah and he will he convinced that the passage in question is 
no prophecy of the person called Jesus Christ. I pass on to the 
second passage quoted from the old testament by the new as ^ 
prophecy of Jesus-Christ. . 



12 AN EXAMINATION OF THE PASSAGES 

Matthew chap. 2. v. 1st. '♦ Now when Jesus was bora in Be- 
" thleham of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold there 
" came wise meafrom the east to Jerusalem,- -saying, where is he 
*f that is born king of the Jews ? for we have seen his star in the 
" East and are come to worship him — When Herod the king heard 
rt these things he was troubled, and all Jerusalemn with him, — 
" and when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the 
" people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be 
" born— andthey said unto him in Bethlehem in the land of Judea; 
" for thus it is written by the prophet — and thou Bethlekem % in the 
" land of Judea art not the least among the princes of Judah, for out 
** of thee shall come a Governor that shall rule my people IsraiL"-^ 
This passage is in Micah chap. 5, v. 2. 

I pass over the absurdity of seeing and following a star in the 
day time as a man would a will with the zvhisp, or a candle and 
lanthron at night ; and also that of seeing it in the east when them- 
selves came from the east; for could such a thing be seen at all to 
serve them for a guide, it must be in the west to them. I confine 
myself solely to the passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ. 

The book of Micah, in the passage above quoted, chap 5. ven 
2. is speaking of some person, without mentioning his namej 
from whom some great atchievements were expected ; but the 
description he gives of this person at the 5 th v. proves evidently 
that it is not Jesus Christ, for he says at the 5th verse, " And this 
" man shall be the peace when the Assyrian shall come into our 
" land, and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise 
H up against him (that is, against the Assyrian) seven shepherds 
4t and eight principal men. — v. 6. — And they shall waste the 
" land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod 
te on the entrance thereof ; thus shall He (die person spoken of 
<s at the head of the second verse) deliver us from the Assyrian 



IN THE NEW TESTAMENT, ] $ 

ee when be cometh into our land, and when he treadeth within 
" our borders/' 

This is so evidently descriptive of a mil itary chief, that it can- 
not be applied to Christ without outraging the character they pre-? 
tend to give us of him. Besides which, the circumstances of the 
times here spoken of, and those of the times in which Christ is 
said to have lived, are in contradiction to each other. It was the 
Romans, and not the Assyrians, that had conquered and were in 
the land of Judea, and trod in their palaces when Christ was born, 
and when he died, and so far from his driving them out, it was 
they who signed the warrant for his execution and he suffered 
under it. 

Having thus shewn that this is no prophecy of Jesus Christ, I 
pass on to the third passage quoted from the Old Testament by 
the New as a prophecy of him. 

This, like the nrst I have spoken of is introduced by a dream. 
Joseph dreameth another dream, and dreameth that he seeth 
another Angel. The acconnt begins at the 13th v. of 2d chap, 
$f Matthew. 

** The angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, 
*' saying, Arise and take the young child and his mother and 
f flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word : 
". For Herod will seek the life of the young child to destroy him. 
f — When he arose he took the young child and his mother by 
" night and departed into Egypt — and was there until the death 
*' of" Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the 
" Lord by the prophet saying, Out of Egypt have 1 called my 
I' son." 

This passage is in'the book of Hosea, chap. xi. ver. 1. The 
words are, *' When Israel was a child then I loved him and called 
i[ my son out of Egypt— -As they called them so they went from 



14 AN EXAMINATION OF THE PASSAGES 

V them, they sacrificed unto Baalim and burnt incense to grav- 

V en images." 

This passage, falsely called a prophecy of Christ, refers totbe 
children of Israel coming out of Egypt in the time of Pharaoh, 
and to the idolatry Ihey committed afterwards. To make it ap- 
ply to Jesus Christ he then must be the person who sacrificed un- 
to Baalim and burnt incence to graven images ; for the persons call- 
ed out of Egypt by the collective name, Israel, and the persons 
committing this idolatry are the rame persons, or the descendants 
of them. This then can be no prophecy of Jesus Christ unless 
they are willing to make an idolator of him. I pass on to the 
fourth passage called a prophecy by the writer of the %ook of 
(Matthew. 

This is introduced by a story told by nobody, but himself, and 
scarcely believed by any body, of the slaughter of all the chil- 
dren under two years old, by the command of Herod. A thing 
which it is not probable could be done by Herod as he only held 
an office under the Roman government, to which appeals could 
always be had, as we see in the case of Paul. 

Matthew, however, having made or told 'this story, says, chap. 
ii. ver. 17. — " Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jere- 
# my the prophet, saying, — In Bamah was there a voice heard la- 
** mentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for 
" her children and would not he comforted because they were not."'' 

This passage isin Jeremiah, chap xxxi. ver. 13. and this verse, 
when separated from ihe verses before it and after it, and which 
explains its application, might with equal propriety be applied to 
every case of wars, sieges, and other violences, such as the 
Christians themselves have often done to the Jews, where mo-, 
thers have lamented the loss of their children. There is nothing 
in ihe verse taken singly that designates, or points out, any. parti- 



IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. is 

cular application of it, otherwise than that it points to some cir- 
cumstance which, at the time of writing it, had already hap- 
pened, and not to a thing yet to happen, for the verse is in the 
preter or past tense — I go to explain the case and shew the appli- 
cation of the verse. 

Jeremiah lived in the time that Nebuchadnezar besieged, took, 
plundered, and destroyed Jerusalem and led the Jews captive to 
Babylon. Hecarried his violence against the Jews to every ex- 
treme. He slew the sons of king Zedekiah before his face, he 
then put out the eyes of Zedekiah, and kept him in prison till the 
day of his death. 

It is of this time of sorrow and suffering to the Jews that Jere- 
miah is speaking. Their Temple was destroyed, their land deso- 
lated, their nation and government entirely broken up, and them- 
selves, men, women, and children, carried into captivity. They 
had too many sorrows of their own, immediately before their eyes, 
to permit them, or any of their chiefs, to be employing them- 
selves on things that might, or might not, happen in the World 
several hundred years afterwards. 

It is, as already observed, of this time of sorrow and suffering 
to the Jews that Jeremiah is speaking in the verse in question. In 
the two next verses the 16 and 17, he endeavours to console the 
sufferers by giving them hopes, and, according to the fashion of 
speaking in those days, assurances from the Lord, that their suf- 
ferings should have an end, and that their children should return 
again to their own land. But I leave the verses to speak for 
themselves, and the Old-testament to testify against the New. 

Jeremiah chap. xxxi. ver. 15. — " Thus saith the Lord a voice 
'* was heard in Ramah (it is in the preter tense) lamentation and 
rt bitter weeping: Rachel weeping for her children, refused to 
t( be comforted for her children because they were not. 



16 AN EXAMINATION OF ?HE PASSAGES 

Verse 16. — « Thus saith the Lord, refrain thy voice from 
*' weeping, and thine eyes from tears: for thy work shall be re- 
" warded, saith the Lord, and they shall come again from the 
** land of the enemy. 

Verse 1 7. — " And there is hope in thine end, saith the Lord, 
" (hat thy children shall come again to their oivn border. u 

By what strange ignorance or imposition is it, that the chil- 
dren of which Jeremiah speaks (meaning the people of the Jew- 
ish nation, scripturally called children of Israel, and not mere 
infants under two years old) and who were to return again from 
the land of the enemy, and come again into their own borders^ 
can mean the children that Matthew makes Herod to slaughter. 
Could those return again from the land of the enemy, or how 
can the land of the enemy be applied to them ? Could they come 
again to their own Borders? Good heavens ! How has the world 
been imposed upon by testament-makers, priest-craft, and pre- 
tended prophecies. I pass on to the fifth passage called a pro- 
phecy of Jesus Christ. 

This, like two of the former, is introduced by a dream. Jo- 
seph dreameth another dream, and dreameth of another Angel, 
and Matthew is again the historian of the dream and the dreamer, 
If it were asked how Matthew could know what Joseph dreamed., 
neither the Bishop nor all the Church could answer the question, 
Perhaps it was Matthew that dreamed and not Joseph ; that is, 
Joseph dreamed by proxy in Matthew's brain, as they tell us Da- 
niel dreamed for Nebuchadnezor.-^-But be this as it may I go on 
with my subject. 

The account of this dream is in Matthew, chap. ii. ver. 19, 
" But when Herod was dead, behold an Angel of the Lord ap- 
i* peared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt — Saying, Arise, and 
fi take the young child and his mother and go into the land of 



IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. IV 

** Israel, for they are dead which sought the young child's life — ^ 
" and he arose and took the young child and his mother and came 
" into the land of Israel— But when he heard that Archelaus did 
w feign in Judea in the room of hi* father Herod, he was afraid 
" to go thither. Notwithstanding being warned of God in a 
" dream (here is another dream) he turned aside into the parts of 
41 Galilee — and he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth that it 
*' might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets — He shall be 
" called a Nazarine. 

Here is good, circumstantial evidence, that Matthew dreamed, 
for there is no such passage in all the Old Testament : and I in- 
vite the bishop and all the priests of Christendom, including those 
<&f America, to produce it. I pass on to the sixth passage called 
a prophecy of Jesus Christ. 

This, as Swift says on another occasion, is lugged in head an 
Moulders. It needs only to be seen in order to be hooted as a 
ibrced and far-fetched piece of imposition. 

Matthew, chap. 4. v. 12. " Now when Jesus heard that John 
*• was cast into prison he departed into Galilee — and leaving Na- 
* zareth became and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea- 
*' coast, in the borders of Zebulon and Nephthalim — That it might 
** be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias (Isaiah) the prophet, 
" saying, — The land ofZebulon, and the land of Nephthali?n, by the 
" way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles — the peo- 
tf pie which sat in darkness saiv great light, and to them ivliich sat in 
** the region and shadow oj death, light is springing upon them." 

I wonder Matthew has not made the cris-cross-rOw, or the 
christ-cross-now, (I know not how the priests spell it) into a pro- 
phecy. He might as well have done this, as cut out these uncon- 
nected and unclescriptive sentences from the place they stand in 
md dubbed them with that title. 



IS AN EXAMINATION OP THE PASSAGES 

The words, however, are in Isaiah, chap. 9, v. 1,2. asfok 
lows : 

" Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vex- 
**. ation when at the first he lightly afflicted the land ofZebulon, and 
" the land of Napthali, and afterwards did more grievously afflict 
" her by the way of the sea beyond Jordan in Galilee of the nations" 

All this relate to two circumstances that had already happened 
at the time these words in Isaiah were written. The one where 
the land ofZebulon and of Napthali had been Tightly afflicted, and 
afterwards more grievously by the way of the sea. 

But observe reader, how Matthew has falsified the text. He 
begins his quotation at a part of the verse where there is not so 
much as a comma, and thereby cuts off every thing that relates 
to the first affliction. He then leaves out all that relate to the se- 
cond affliction, and by this means leaves out every thing that makes 
the verse intelligible, and reduces it to a senseless skeleton of names 
of towns. 

To bring this imposition of Matthew clearly and immediately 
before the eye of the reader, I will repeat the verse, and put be- 
tween crotchets [] the words he has left out, and put in Italics 
those he has preserved. 

[Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in hor vexa- 
tion when at the first he lightly afflicted} the land ofZebulon and 
the land of Napthali, [and did afterwards more grievously afflict her] 
by the ivay of the sea beyond Jordan in Galilee of the nations. 

What gross imposition is it to gut, as the phrase is, a verse in 
this manner, render it perfectly senseless, and then puff it off on a 
credulous world as a prophecy. I proceed to the next verse. 

v. 2. " The people that walked in darkness have seen 
"a great light; they that dwell in the land of the shadow of 
" death upon them hath the light shined." All this is historical 



IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. IS> 

and not in the least prophetical. The whole is in the preter tense. 
It speaks of things that had been accomplished at the time the words 
were written, and not of things to be accomplished afterwards. 

As then the passage is in no possible sense prophetical, nor in- 
tended to be so, and that to attempt to make it so is not only to fal- 
sify the original, but to commit a criminal imposition, it is matter of 
no concern to us, otherwise than as curiosity, to know who the 
people were of which the passage speaks that sat in darkness, and 
what the light was that had shined in upon them. 

If we look into the preceding chapter, the 8th, of which the 9th 
is only a continuation, we shall find the writer speaking at the 19th 
verse of " witches and wizards who peep about and mutter," and ot 
people who made application to them ; and he preaches and ex- 
horts them against this darksome practice. It is of this people, 
and of tfiis darksome practice, or ivalking in darkness that he is 
speaking at the 2d verse of the 9th chapter ; and with respect to 
the light that had shined in upon the?n it refers entirely to his own mi- 
nistry, and to the boldness of it, which opposed itself to that of 
the witches and zvizards who peeped about and muttered. 

Isaiah is upon the whole, a wild disorderly writer, preserving, in 
general, no clear chain of perception in the arrangement of his 
ideas, and consequently producing no defined conclusions from 
them. It is the wildness ofhis stile, the confusion of his ideas, and 
the ranting metaphors he employs, that have afforded so many op- 
portunities to priest- craft in some cases, and to superstition in 
others, to impose those defects upon the world as prophecies of 
Jesus Christ. Finding no direct meaning in them, and not know, 
ing what to make of them, and supposing, at the same time, they 
were intended to have a meaning they supplied the defect by in- 
venting a meaning of their own, and called it his'.. I have, how- 
ever, in this place, done Isaiah the justice to rescue him from the 
.daws of Matthew, who has torn him unmercifully to pieces, and 



3© AN EXAMINATION OF THE PASSAGE* 

from the imposition or ignorance of priests and commentators, by 
letting Isaiah speak for himself. 

If the words walking in darkness^ and light breaking in, could, in 
any case, be applied prophetically, which they cannot be, tliejt 
would better apply to the times we now live in, than to any other. 
The world has " tvalkedin darkness" for eighteen hundred years* 
both as to religion and government, and it is only since the Ame* 
rican revolution began that light has broken in. The belief of on* 
God, whose aj tributes are revealed to us in the book or scripture of 
the creation which no human hand can counterfeit or falsify, and 
not in a written or printed book, which, as Matthew has shewn, 
can be altered or falsified by ignorance or design, is now making 
its way among us ; and as to government, the light is already gone 
forth, and whilst men ought to be careful not to be blinded by the 
excess of it, as at a certain time in France, when every thing was 
Kobespierean violence, they ought to reverence, and even to adore 
it, with all the firmness and perseverance that true wisdom can. 
inspire. 

I pass on to the seventh passage, called a prophecy of Jesus. 
Christ. 

Matthew, chap. 3, v. 16. " When the evening was come,. 
'' they brought unto him, (Jesus) many that were possessed with 
" devils, and he cast out the spirit with his word, and healed all 
" that were sick— That it might be fulfilled, which was spoken 
u by Esaias, (Isaiah) the prophet say ing, himself took our injir- 
*' mities, and bear our sicknesses." 

This affair of people being possessed by devils, and of casting 
them out, was the fable of the day, when the books of the New- 
Testament were written. It had not existanceat any other time- 
The books of the Old Testament mention no such thing; the peo* 
pie of the present day know of no such thing ; nor does the histo^ 



JN THE NEW TESTAMENT. f| 

ry of any people or country speak of such a thing. It starts upon 
us all at once in the book of* Matthew; and is altogether an inven- 
tion of the New*Testament-makers and the Christian church* 
The book of Matthew, is the first book where the word Devil is 
mentioned, as a being in the singular number.* We read in some of 
the books of the Old Testament, of things called familiar spirits, the 
supposed companions of people called witches and wizards. It 
was no other than the trick of pretended conjurors to obtain money 
from credulous and ignorant people ; or the fabricated charge of 
superstitious malignancy against unfortunate and decripid old age. 

But the idea of a familiar spirit, if we can affix any idea to the 
term, is exceedingly different to that of being possessed by a devil. 
In the one case the supposed familiar spirit is a dextrious agent, 
that comes and goes and does as he is bidden : in the other, he is ^ 
turbulant roaring monster, that tears and tortures the body into, 
convulsions. Reader, whoever thou art, put thy trust in thy cre- 
ator, make use of the reason he endowed thee with, and cast from 
thee all such fables. 

The passage alluded to by Matthew, for as a quotation it is false, 
is in Isaiah, chap. 53) v. 4. which is as follows; 

" Surely he (the person of whom Isaiah is speaking,) hath borne 
" our griefs and carried our sorrows." It is in the prefer tense. 

Here is nothing about casting- out devils, nor curing of sickness- 
es. The passage, therefore, so far from being a prophecy of Christ, 
is not even applicable as a circumstance. 

Isaiah, or at least the w.riter of the book that bears his name, 
employs the whole of this chap, the 53, in lamenting the suffer- 
ings of some deceased person of whom he speaks very pathetically. 
It is a monody on the death of a friend ; but he mentions not the 
name of the person, nor gives any circumstance of him by wl>icU 

* The. word devil is a personification of the word evil 



22 <AN EXAMINATION OF THE PASSAGES 

lie can be personally known; and it is this silence, which is evi- 
dence of nothing, that Matthew has laid hold of, to put the name 
of Christ to it; as if the chiefs of the Jews, whose sorrows were 
then great, and the times they lived in big with danger, were never 
thinking about their own affairs, nor the fate of their own friends, 
but were continually running a Wild-Goose chase into futurity. 

To make a monody into a prophecy is an absurdity. The char- 
acters and circumstances of men, even in different ages of the 
world, are so much alike, that what is said of one, may with pro- 
priety be said of many ; but this fitness does not make the passage 
into a prophecy; and none but an impostor, or a bigot, would cali 
it so. 

Isaiah, in deploring the hard fate and loss of his friend, mentions 
nothing of him but what the human lot of man is subject 10. All 
the cases he states of him, his persecutions, his imprisonment, his 
patience in suffering, and his perseverance in principle", are all 
within the line of nature; they belong exclusively to none, and 
may with justness be said of many. But if Jesus Christ was the 
person the church represents him to be, that which would exclu- 
sively apply to him, must be something that could not apply to any 
other person ; something beyond the line of nature ; something be- 
yond the lot of mortal man ; and there are no such expressions in 
this chapter, nor any other chapter in the Old Testament. 

It is no exclusive discription to say of a person, as is said of the 
person, Isaiah is lamenting in this chapter. " He was oppressed, 
ie and he zvas afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth, he is brought as a 
" Lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before his sheerers, is dumb^ 
u so he opened not his mouth." This may be said of thousands of 
persons, who have suffered oppression and unjust death with pa- 
tience, silence and perfect resignation. 

Grotius, whom the bishop esteems a most learned man, and 



IN THE NEW TESTAMENT, 23 

who certainly was so, supposes that the person of whom Isaiah 
is speaking, is Jeremiah. Grotius is led into this opinion, from 
the agreement there is between the discription given by Isaiah, 
and the case of Jeremiah, as stated in the book that bears his name.. 
If Jeremiah was an innocent man, and not a traitor in the interest 
of Nebuchadnezer, when Jerusalem was besieged, his case was 
hard ; He was accused by his countrymen, was persecuted, Op- 
pressed, and imprisoned, and he says of himself, (see Jeremiah 
chap. 11, v. 19.) " But as for me, I was like a lamb or an Ox 
(t that is brought to the slaughter." 

I should be inclined to the same opinion with Grotius, had Isai- 
ah lived at the time when Jeremiah underwent the cruelties of 
which he speaks ; but Isaiah died about 50 years before ; and it 
is of a person of his own time, whose case Isaiah is lamenting in 
the chapter in question, and which imposition and bigotry, more 
than seven hundred years afterwards, perverted into a prophecy 
«>f a person they call Jesus Christ. 

I pass on to the eighth passage called a prophecy of Jesus 
Christ. 

Matthew, chap. .1 2, v. 14. " Then the Pharisees went out and 

r " held a council against him, how they might destroy him But 

*' when Jesus knew it he withdrew himself; and great numbers- 
** followed him and he healed them all — and he charged them they 
"should not make him known: That it might be fulfilled which 
" was spoken by Esaias (Isaiah) the prophet, saying, 

<* Behold my servant whom I have chosen ; my beloved in whom 

* my soul is well pleased, I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall 

* shew judgment to the gentiles — he shall not strivenorcry, neither 

* shall any man hear his voice in the streets — a bruised reed shall 
& he not break, and smoaking flax shall he not quench till he sends 

* forth judgment unto victory— and in his name shall the Gentiles 
'<' trust," 



Rt AN EXA.MTN'ATfON OF THE PASSAGES 

?n the first place, this passage hath not the least relation to the 
purpose for which it is quoted. 

Matthew says, that the Pharisees held a council against Jesus 
to destroy him — that Jesus withdrew himself — that great numbers 
followed him — that he healed them— and that he charged them 
they should not make him kno.wn. 

But the passage Matthew, has quoted as being fulfilled by these 
circumstances, dos not so much as apply to any one of them. It 
has nothing to do with the Pharisees, holding a council to distroy 
Jesus — with his withdrawing himself — with great numbers follow- 
ing him — with his healing them — nor with his charging them not 
to make him known. 

The purpose for which the passage is quoted, and the passage 
itself, are as remote from each other, as nothing from something. 
But the case is, that people have been solong in the habit of read- 
ing the books called the Bible and Testament with their eyes shut, 
and their senses locked up, that the most stupid inconsistencies 
have passed on them for truth, and impost (ion for prophecy. The 
all wise creator hath been dishonoured by being made the author 
of Fable, and the human mind degraded by believing it. 

In this passage, as in that last mentioned, the name of the person 
©f whom the passage speaks, is not given, and we are left in the 
dark respecting him. It is this defect in the history, that bigotry 
and imposition have laid hold of, to call it prophecy. 

Had Isaiah lived in the time of Cyrus, the passage would dis- 
criptively apply to him. As king of Persia, his authority was great 
among the Gentiles, and it is of such a character the passage 
speaks, and his friendship to the Jews whom he liberated from 
captivity, and who might then be compared to a bruised reed* was 
extensive. But this discription does not apply to Jesus Christ, 
who had no authority among the Gentiles -, and as to his own coun- 



IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 25 

tfymen, figuratively described by the bruised reed, it was they who 
crusified him. Neither can it be said of him that he did not cry, 
and that his voice was not heard in the street. As a preacher it 
was his business to be heard, and we are told that he travelled 
about the country for that purpose. Matthew has given a long 
sermon, which (if his authority is good, but which is much to be 
doubted since he imposes so much,) Jesus preached to a multitude 
Upon a mountain, and it would be a quibble to say that a mountain, 
is not a street, since it is a place equally as public. 

The last verse in the passage (the 4th,) as it stands in Isaiah, 
and which Matthew has not quoted, says, " He shall not fail nor 
" be discouraged till he have set judgment in the Earth and the 
" Isles shall wait for his law." This also applies to Cyrus. He 
was not discouraged, he did not fail, he conquered all Babylon, li- 
berated the Jews, and established laws. But this cannot be said 
©f Jesus Christ, who, in the passage before us, according to Mat- 
thew, withdrew himself for fear of the Pharisees, and charged 
the people that followed him not to make it known where he was ; 
and who, according to other parts of the Testament, was continu- 
ally moving from place to place to avoid being apprehended.* 

* In the second part of the Age of Reason, I have shewn that 
the book ascribed to Isaiah is not only miscellaneous as to matter, 
but as to authorship; that there are parts in it which could not be 
written by Isaiah, because they speak of things one hundred and 
fifty years after he was dead. The instance I have given of this, 
in that work, corresponds with the subject I am upon, at least a 
Utile better than Matthew's introduction and His quotation 

Isaiah lived, the latter part of his life, in the time of Hezekiah, 
and it was about one hundred and fifty years from the death of 
Hezekiah to the first year of the reign of Cyrus, when Cyrus 
published a proclamation, which is given in the first chapter of the 
book of Ezra, for the return of the Jews to Jerusalem. It cannot 
be doubted, at least it ought not to be doubted, that the Jews would 
feel an affectionate gratitude for this act of benevolent justice, and 
it is natural they wjuld express that gratitude in the customary 
stile, bombastical and hyperbolical as it was, which they used or* 



2& AN EXAMINATION OF THE PASSAGES 

But It is immaterial to us, at this distance of time, to kno^ 
who the person was: It is sufficient to the purpose I am upon, 
that of detecting fraud and falsehood, to know who il was not*, 
and to shew it was not the person called Jesus Christ. 

I pass on to the ninth passage called a prophecy- of Jesus 

Christ. 

Matthew, chap; 21, v. I. " And when they drew nigh unte 
** Jerusalem, and were come to B^th phage, unto the mount of 
" Olives, then Jesus sent two of his disciples — saying, unto them., 
* r go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall 
™ find an Ass tied, and a colt with her, loose them and bring them 



extraordinary occasions, and which was, and still is, in practice 
with all the eastern nations-: 

The instance to which I refer, and which is given in the second 
part of the Age of Reason, is the last verse of the 44th chapter and 
the beginning of the 45th — in these words ; " That saith of Cyrus 
" he is my- shepherd 1 and shall perform all my pleasure : even saying 
" to Jerusalem thou shall be built, and to the Temple, thy foundation 
l * shall lie laid. THus saith the Lord to his anoiced, to Cyrus, whose 
" right hand I have holden to subdue nations before him ; and I will 
41 loose t/ie, loins ofkings+to onen bejore him the two leaved gates and 
" the gates shall not be shut." 

This complimentary address is in the present tense, which shews 
that the things of which it- speaks were in existance at the time of 
writing it- and consequently,, that the author must have been at 
least one hundred and fifty years later than Isaiah, and that the 
book which bears his name is a compilation. The proverbs called 
Solomon's and the Psalms called David's, are of the same kind* 
The two last verses of the second book of Chronicles, and the three 
first verses of the first chapter of Ezra, are word for word the 
sarav ; which shew that the compilers of the Bible mixed the wri- 
tings of different authors together, and put them under some com- 
mon head. 

As we rnve here an instance in the 44 and 45 chapters of the 
intro Auction of the name of Cyrus into a book to which it cannot 
belong, it affords good ground to conduce, that the passage in the 
42d. chapter,, in which the charae'er of Cyrus is given with- 
out his name, has been introduced in like manner, and that the per- 
son there spoken of is Cyrus. 



*N THE NEW TESTAMENT. 27 

■*< unto me, — and if any man say ought to you, ye shall say, the 
«< Lord hath need of them, and straightway he will send 
*" them. 

« All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken 
if* by the prophets, saying. Tell ye the daughter ofZion, behold thy 
y king tometh unto thee meek, and setting on an Ass, and a coltife 
*< foal of an Ass." 

Poor Ass! let it be some consolation amidst all thy sufferings,, 
that if the heathen world erected a Bear into a constellation, the 
christian world has elevated thee into a prophecy. 

This passage is in Zechariah, chap. 9. v. 9. and is one of the 
whims of friend Zechariah to congratulate his countrymen who 
were then returned from captivity in Babylon and himself with 
them, to Jerusalem. It has no concern with any other subject. 
It is strange that apostles, priests, and comentators, never permit* 
or never suppose, the Jews to be speaking of their own affairs. 
Every thing in the Jewish books is perverted and distorted into 
meanings never intended by the writers. Even the poor ass must 
not be a jew-ass but a christian-ass. I wonder they did not make 
an apostle of him, or a bishop, or at least make inm speak and 
jprophesy, He could have lifted up his voice as loud as any of 
them. 

Zechariah, in the first chapter of his book, indulges himself in 
several whims on the joy of getting back to Jerusalem. He says 
at the 8th verse, «• I saw by night (Zechariah was a sharp sighted 
'**" seer) and behold a man setting on a red horse (yes reader, a red 
•* f horse) and he stood among the myrtle trees that were in the 
*' bottom, and behind him were red horses, speckled and zvhite" 
He says nothing about green horses, nor blue horses, perhaps be* 
cause it is d-fficult to distinguish green from blue by night, but a 
christian can have no doubt they were there* because "faith '& 
* f the evidence of things not seen" 



23 AN EXAMINATION OF THE PASSAGES 

Zechariah then introduces an angel among his horses, but he 
does not tell us what colour the angel was of, whether black Of 
white, nor whether he came to buy horses, or only to look at 
them as curiosities, for certainly they were of that kind. Be this 
however as it may, he enters into conversation with this angel on 
the joyful affair of getting back to Jerusalem, and he saith at the 
16th verse " Therefore, thus saith the Lord, 1 AM RETURNED 
tl to Jerusalem with mercies', my house shall be built in it saith the 
£t Lord of hosts, and a line shall be stretched forth upon Jerusalem,''' 
An expression signifying the rebuilding the city. 

All this, whimsical and imaginary as it is, sufficiently proves that 
it was the entry of the Jews into Jerusalem from captivity, and 
not the entry of Jesus Christ seven hundred years afterwards, that 
is the subject upon which Zechariah is always speaking. 

As to the expression ofriding upon an ass, which commentators 
represent as a sign of humility in Jesus Christ, the case is, he ne- 
ver was so well mounted before. The asses of those countries are 
large and well proportioned, an^ were anciently the chief of riding 
animals. Their beasts of burden, and which served also for the 
Conveyance of the poor, were camels and dromedaries. We read 
in Judges chap. 10. v. 4. that " Jair, (one of the judges oflsrael) 
P had thirty sons that rode on thirty ass-colts, and they had 
is thirty cities." But commentators destort every thing. 

There is besides very reasonable ground to conclude that this 
story of Jesus riding publicly into Jerusalem, accompanied, as it is 
said at the 8th and 9th Verses, by a great multitude, shouting and 
rejoicing and spreading their garments by the way, is altogether 
a story destitute of truth. 

In the last passage called a prophesy that I examined, Jesus is 
represented as withdrawing, that is, running away, and concealing 
himself for fear of being apprehended, and charging the people 
that were with him not to make him known. No new circum* 



JN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 29 

stance had arisen in the interim to change his condition for the bet- 
ter; yethere he is represented as making his public entry into the 
same city, from which he had fled for safety. The two cases con- 
tradict each other so much, that if both are not false, one of them 
at least can scarcely be true. For my own part, I do not believe 
there is one word of historical truth in the whole book. I look up- 
on it at best to be a romance; the principal personage of which is 
an imaginary or allegorical character founded upon some tale, and 
in which the moral is in many parts good, and the narrative part 
very badly and blunderingly written. 

I pass on to the 10th passage called a prophesy of Jesus Christ, 

Matthew, chap. 26. v. 51. " And behold one of them which 
* was with Jesus (meaning Peter) stretched out his hand, and drew 
r his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest, and smote of! 
«< his ear. Then said Jesus unto him. Put up again thy sword 
i' into its place, for all they that take the sword shall perish with 
" the sword — Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my father 
9t and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels, 
" But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be. 
** — In that same hour Jesus said to the multitudes are ye come 
" out as against a. thief with swords and with staves for to take 
"me? I sat daily with you teaching in the temple, and ye laid 
" no hold on me. But all this was done that the scriptures of the 
" prophets might be fulfilled/* 

This loose and general manner of speaking admits neither of de- 
tection nor of proof. Here is no quotation given, nor the name 
of any bible author mentioned, to which reference can be had. 

There are, however, some high improbabilities against the 
truth of the account. 

First—It is not probable that the Jews who were then a con^ 
quered people and under subjection to the Romans .should be per- 
mitted to wear swords. 



&0 AN EXAMINATION OF THE PASSAGES 

2dly — If Peter had attacked the servant of the high priest anil 
cut off his ear, he would have been immediately taken up by the 
guard that took up his master and sent to prison with him. 

3dly — What sort of disciples and preaching apostles must those 
jof Christ have been that wore swords? 

4thly — This scene is represented to have taken place the same 
evening of what is called the Lord's supper, which makes, accord- 
ing to the ceremony of it, the inconsistency of wearing swords the 
greater. 

I pass on to the eleventh passage called a prophecy of Jesus' 
Christ. 

Matthew, chap. 27. v. 3. " Then Judas which had betrayed 
"■him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself* 
*' and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests. 
" and elders — saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the 
** innocent blood. And they said what is that to us, see thou to 
ec to that. — And he cast down the pieces of silver and departed and 
*' went and hanged himself— And the chief priests took the silver 
** pieces and said, it is not lawful to put them in the treasury be- 
"** cause it is the price of blood — And they took counsel and bought 
* l with them the potters field to bury strangers in — Wherefore 
** that field is called the field of blood unto this day, — Then wasful- 
" filled that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying, 
" And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that 
" was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value, and 
*• gave them for the potters field as the Lord appointed me." 

This is a most bare- faced- piece of imposition. The pas- 
sage in Jeremian which speaks of the purchase of a field, has no 
more to do with the case to which Matthew applies it, than it has 
to do with the purchase of lands in America. 1 will recite the 
whole passage. 



i;n the new testament. 31 

Jeremiah, chap. 32. v. 6. " And Jeremiah said, the word of 
$* the Lord came unto me, saying — Behold Hanameil the son of 
" Shallum thine uncle shall come unto thee, saying, buy thee my 
< ; field that is in Anathoth, for the right of redemption is thine to 
" buy it — So Hanameil mine uncle's son came to me in the court 
i[t of the prison, according to the word of the Lord, and said un- 

* to me, buy my field I pray thee that is in Anathoth, which is in 

* the the country of Benjamin, for the right of inheritance is thine, 
a and the redemption is thine; buy it for thyself. Then I knew 

' this was the word of the Lord — And I bought the field of Ha- 

* nameil mineuncie's son that was in Anathoth, and weighed him 
a the money even seventeen shekels of silver — and I subscribed 
f the evidence and sealed it; and took witnesses and weighed 
ai him the money in balances. — Sol took the evidence of the pur- 

* chase, both that which was sealed according to the law and 
Ci custom, and that which was open — and 1 gave the evidence of 
n the purchase unto Baruek, the son of Neriah^the son of Maasei- 
(( ath in the sight of Hanameil mine uncle's son, and in the pre- 
** sence of the witnesses that subscribed, before all the Jews that 
fr sat in the court of the prison — and I charged Barack before them, 

* saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel : Take 

* these evidences, this evidence of the purchase, both which is 
'** sealed, and this evidence which is open, and put them in an 

* earthen vessel that they may continue many days — for thus saitn 
f* the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, houses and fields, and vine- 
'*' yards, shall be possessed again in this land." 

I forbear making any remark on this abominable imposition oF 
Matthew. The thing glaringly speaks for itself. It is priests and 
commentators that I rather ought to censure for having preached 
falshood so long, and kept people in darkness with respect to those 
impositions. I am not contending with these men upon poinds of 
doctrine, for I know that sophistry has always a city of refuge. I 
am speaking of facts ; for wherever the thing called a fact is a false- 



32 -AN EXAMINATION OF THE PASSAGES 

hood, the faith founded upon it is delusion, and the doctrine raised 
upon it, not true. Ah, reader, put thy trust in thy creator and 
thou wilt be safe; but if thou trustest to the books called the scrip- 
tures thou trustest to the rotten staff of fable and falsehood. But I 
return to my subject. 

There is among the whims and reveries of Zechariah, mention 
made of thirty pieces of silver given to a Potter. They can hard- 
ly have been so stupid as to mistake a potter for a field ; and if they 
had, the passage in Zechariah has no more to do with Jesus, Ju- 
das, and the field to bury strangers in, than that already quoted, 
I will recite the passage. 

Zechariah, chap. 1 1, v. 7. " And I will feed the flock ofslaugh- 
" ter, even you, O poor of the flock, and I took unto me two 
" staves ; the one I called Beauty and the other I called Bands, and 
*' I fed the flock. — Three shepherds also I cut off in one month ; 
" and my soul loathed them, and their soul also abhorred me.— 
"Then said I, I will not feed you; that which dieth, let it die; 
** and that which is to be cut off, let it be cut off, and let the rest 
" eat every one the flesh of another. — And I took my staff, even 
■" Beauty, and cut it asunder that I might break my covenant which 
" I had made with all the people. — And it was broken in that day; 
*' and so the poor of the flock who waited upon me knew that it 

* was the word of the Lord. 

" And I said unto them, if ye think good give me my price> and 
"if not, forbear. So they weighed for my ■price thirty pieces of 
" silver.— And the Lord said unto me, cast it unto the potter; a 

* goodly price that I was prised at of them ; and I took the thirty 
"■ pieces of silver and cast them to the potter in the house of the 
" Lord. 



IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 33 

" When I cut asunder mine other staff even Bands that I might 
" break the brotherhood between Judeah and Israel."* 

There is no making either head or tail of this incoherent gib- 
berish. His two staves, one called Beauty, and the other Bands, 
is so much like a fairy tale that I doubt if it had any higher origin. 
There is, however, no part that has the least relation to the case 



* Whiston, in his Essay on the Old Testament says, that the pas- 
sage of Zachariah, of which I have spoken was in thecopies of the 
Bible of the first century, in the book of Jeremiah, from whence, 
says he, it was taken and inserted without coherence, in that of 
Zachariah — well, let it be so, it does not make the case a whit the 
better for the New-Testament ; but it makes the case a great deal 
the worse for the old. Because it shews, as I have mentioned 
respecting some passages in the book ascribed to Isaiah, that the 
works of different authors have been so mixed and confounded 
together thev cannot now be discriminated, except where they 
are historical, chronological, or biographical as is the enterpolation 
in Isaiah. It is the name of Cyrus inserted where it could not be 
inserted, as the man was not in existance til! one hundred and fif- 
ty years after the time of Isaiah, that detects the interpolation and 
the blunder with it. 

Whiston was a man of great literary learning, and what is of 
much higher degree, of deep scientific learning. He was one of 
the best and most celebrated mathematicians of his time, for which 
he was made professor of mathematics of the university of Cam- 
bridge. He wrote so much in deft nee ot the Old Testament, 
and of what he calls prophesies of Jesus Christ, that at last he be- 
gan to suspect the truth of the scriptures and wrote against them : 
tor it is only those who examine them that see into the imposi- 
tion. Those who believe them most are those who know least 
about them. 

Whiston after writing so much in defence of the scriptures was 
at last prosecuted for writing dgamst them. It was this that gave 
occasion to Swift, in his ludicrous Epigram on Ditton and Whis- 
ton, each of which set up to find out ihe longitude, to call the one 
good master Ditton, and the other Wicked Will Whiston. But as 
Swift was a great associate with the Free-thinkers of those days, 
such as Bolingbroke, Pope, and others, who did not believe the 
books called t.ie scriptures, there is no certainty whether be witti- 
ly called him wiektd tor defending the scriptures, or for writing 
against them. The known character of Swift decides for ths 
former. 



34- AN EXAMINATION OF THE PASSAGES 

stated in Matthew ; on the contrary, it is the reverse of it.. Here 
the thirty pieces of silver, whatever it was for, is called a goodly 
price, it was as much as the thing was worth, and according to the 
language of the day, was approved of by the Lord, and the money 
given to the potter in the house of the Lord. In the case of Jesus 
and Judas, as stated in Matthew, the thirty pieces of silver were 
the price of blood ; the transaction was condemned by the Lord, 
and the money when refunded was refused admitance into the 
treasury. Every thing in the two cases is the reverse of each 
other. 

Besides this, a very different and direct contrary account to 
that of Matthew is given of the affair of Judas, in the book called 
the Jets of the Apostles, according to that book the case is, that so 
far from Judas repenting, and returning the money, and the high 
priests buying a field with it to bury strangers in, Judas kept the 
money and bought afield with it for himself; and instead of hang- 
ing himselfas Matthew says, that he fell headlong and burst asun- 
der — some commentators endeavour to get over one part of the 
contradiction by rediculously supposing that Judas hanged himself 
first and the rope broke. 

Acts chap. I, v. 16. " Men and brethren, this scripture must 
ee needs have been fulfilled which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of 
" David spake before concerning Judas, which was guide to them 
<c that took Jesus. (David says not a word about Judas) v. IT, 
" lor he (Judas) was numbered among us and obtained part of our 
" ministry. 

" v. IS. Now this man purchased afield with the reward of iniquity, 
" and falling headlong he burst assunder in the midst, and his bowels 
cc gushed out.' 9 Is it not a species of blasphemy to call the New- 
Testament revealed religion, when we see in it such contradictions 
and absurdities ? 



! 



IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 35 

1 pass on to the 12th passage called a prophesy of Jesus Christ. 

Matthew chap. 27, v. 35. " And they crucified him and part- 
*' ed his garments casting lots ; that it might be fulfilled which was 
fl spoken by the prophet, They^parted my garments among them and 
" upon my vesture did they cast lots." This expression is in the 22d 
Psalm v. I 8. The writer of that Psalm, (whoever he was, for the 
Psalms are a collection and not the work of one man,) is speaking 
of himself and of his own case and not of that of another. He be- 
gins this Psalm with the words which the New-Testament writers 
ascribe to Jesus Christ. i( My God, my God, why Iiast thou forsa- 
" ken ??/e" — words which might be uttered by a complaining man 
without any great impropriety, but very improperly from the mouth 
of a reputed God. 

The picture which the writer draws of his own situation in this 
Psalm, is gloomy enough. He is not prophesying, but complaining 
of his own hard case. He represents himself as surrounded by 
enemies and beset by persecutions or every kind ; and by way of 
shewing the inveteracy of his persecutors, he says at ihe 18 verse, 
They part my garments among them and cast lots upon my vesture. 
The expression is in the present tense ; and is the same as to say, 
they pursue me even to the clothes upon my back, and dispute how 
they shall divide them ; besides, the word vesture does not always 
mean clothing of any kind, but property, or rather the admitting a 
man to, or investing him with property ; and as it is used in this 
Psalm distinct from the word garment, it appears to be used in this 
sense. But Jesus had no property; for they make him to say of 
himself " The Joxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, 
if but the son of man hath not where to lay his head* 

But be this as it may, if we permit ourselves to. suppose the Al- 
mighty would condescend to tell, by what is called Hhe spirit of 
prophesy, what would come to pass in sorae future age of the 



3$ AN EXAMINATION ©F THE PASSAGES 

world it is an injury to our own faculties, and to our ideas of his 
greatness, to imagine it would be about an old coat, or an old pair 
of breeches, or about any thing which the common accidents of 
life, or the quarrels that attend it, exhibit every day. 

That which is within the power of man to do, or in his will not 
io do, is not a subject tor prophesy, even if there were such a thing ; 
because it cannot carry with it any evidence of divine power, or 
divine interposition. The ways of God are not the ways of men. 
That which an almighty power performs, or wills, is not within 
the circle of human power to do, or to controul. But any execu- 
tioner and his assistants might quarrel about dividing the garments 
of a sufferer, or divide them without quarreling, and by that 
means fulfil the thing called a prophesy, or set it aside. 

In the passages before examined, I have exposed the falshood of 
them. In this I exhibit its degrading meanness, as an insult to the 
creator and an injury to human reason. 

Here end the passages called prophesies by Matthew. 

Matthew concludes his book by saying, that when Christ ex- 
pired on the cross, the rocks rent, die graves opened, and the bo- 
dies of many of the saints arose ; and Mark says there was dark- 
ness over the land from the fixth hour until the ninth. They pro- 
duce no prophesy for this. But had these things been facts, they 
would have been a proper subject for prophesy, because none but 
an almighty power could have inspired a fore knowledge of them, 
and afterwards fulfilled them. Since, then, there is no such pro- 
phesy, but a pretended prophesy of an old coat, the proper deduc- 
tion is, there were no such things, and that the book of Matthew 
is fable and falsehood. 

I pass on to the Book, called the Gospel according to St. Mark. 



IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. ■■•$& 

The Book of Mark. 

THERE are but few passages in Mark called prophesies, and 
but few in Luke and John. Such as there are I shall examine, 
and also such other passages as interfere with those cited by Mat- 
thew. 

Mark begins his book by a passage which he puts in the shape 
of a prophesy. Mark, chap. 1. v. 1. — " The beginning of the 
" Gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God. — As it is written in the 
" prophets, Behold 1 send my mtssengen before thy face , which shall 
" prepare the way before thee." Malachi, chap. 3. v. 1 . The pas- 
sage in the original is in the first person. Mark makes this 
passage to be a prophesy of John the Baptist, said, by the 
Church, to be the fore-runner of Jesus Christ. But if we at- 
tend to the verses that follow this expression, as it stands in Ma- 
lachi, and to the first and fifth verses of the next chapter, we shall 
see that this application of it is erroneous and false. 

Malachi havirg said at the first verse " Behold I will send my 
" messenger and he shall prepare the way before me," says at the 
second verse, " But who may abide the day of Ids coming ? and who 
" shall stand tvhen he appear eth f for he is like a refiner's fire, and 
" like fuller's soap." 

This description can have no reference to the birth of Jesus 
Christ, and consequently none to John the Baptist. It is a scene 
of fear and terror that is here described, and the birth of Christ is 
always spoken of as a time of joy and glad tidings. 

Malachi, continuing to speak on the same subject ; explains in 
the next chapter what the scene is of which he speaks in the 
verses above quoted, and who the person is whom he calls the 
messenger. 

Behold, says he, chap. 4. v. I.-— "The day cometh that shall 
f ' burn like an oven, and all the proud, yea ? and all that do wick- 



3$ AN EXAMINATION OF THE PASSAGES 

« edly shall be stubble ; and the day cometh that shall burn them 
<( up saith the Lord of Hosts, that it shall leave them neither root 
" nor brancii." 

Verse 5. — " Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before 
" the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord." 

By what right, or by what imposition or ignorance, Mark has 
made Elijah into John the baptist, and Malachi's description of the 
day of judgement into the birth day of Christ, I leave to the bishop 
to settle. 

Mark, fn the second and third verses of his first chapter, con- 
founds two passages together taken from different books of the Old 
Testament. The second verse, " Behold I send my messenger 
'* before thy face, which shall prepare the nay before ihee," is taken, 
as I have before said, from Malachi. The third verse which says 
" The voice of one crying in the wilderness prepare ye the ivay of the 
"Lord; make his paths straight/' is not in Malachi, but in Isaiah, 
chap. 40, v. 3. Whiston says, that both these verses were origin- 
ally in Isaiah. If so, it is another instance of the disordered state 
of the Bible, and corroborates what I have said with respect to the 
name and description of Cyrus being in the book of Isaiah, to 
which it cannot chronologically belong. 

The words in Isaiah,_chap. 40. v. 3.— -" The voice of him that 
* l cryeth in the wilderness, prepare ye the ivay of the Lord, make his 
"path straight" aie in the present tense, and, consequently, not 
predictive. It is one of those rhetorical figures which the Old Tes- 
tament authors frequently used. That it is merely rhetorical and 
metaphorical maybe seen at the 6th verse. " And the voice said 
"cry, and he said what shall I cry ? All flesh is grass." This is 
evidently nothing but a figure; for flesh is not grass otherwise 
than as a figure or metaphor, where one thing is put for another. 
Besides which, the whole passage is too general and declamatory 
to be applied, exclusively, to any particular person or purpose. 

I pass on to the eleventh chapter. 



IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. S9 

In this chapter Mark speaks of Christ riding into Jerusalem 
upon a colt, but he does not make it the accomplishment of a pro- 
phesy as Matthew has done, for he says nothing about a prophesy. 
Instead of which he goes on the other tack, and in order to add 
new honours to the ass, he makes it to be a miracle; for he says* 
v. 2. it was " a colt zvhereon never man sat" signifying thereby, 
that as the ass had not been broken, he consequently was inspired 
into good manners, for we do not hear that he kicked Jesus Christ 
off. There is not a word about his kicking in all the four Evangelists. 

I pass on from these feats of horsemanship, performed upon a 
jack-ass, to the 15th chapter. 

At the 24th v. of this chapter, Mark speaks of parting Christ's. 
garments and casting lots uponthem, but he applies no prophesy to 
it, as Matthew does. He rather speaks of it as a thing then in 
practice with executioners as it is at this day. 

At the 28th verse of the same chapter, Mark speaks of Christ 
being crucified between two thieves, that, says he, " the scriptures 
" might be fulfilled which saith, and he ivas numbered with the trans- 
" gressors" The same thing might be said of the thieves. 

This expression is in Isaiah, chap. 53, v. 12 — Grotius applies 
it to Jeremiah. But the case has happened so often in the world 
where innocent men have been numbered with transgressors, and 
is still continually happening, that it is absurdity to call it a pro- 
phesy of any particular person. All those whom the church calls 
martyrs were numbered with transgressors. All the honest pa- 
triots who fell upon the scaffold in France, in the time of Robes- 
pierre, were numbered with transgressors; and if himself had not 
fallen, the same case, according to a note in his own hand writing, 
had befallen me, y»t I suppose the bishop will not allow that 
Isaiah was prophesying of Thomas Paine. 

These are all the passages in mark which have any reference t» 
prophesies. 



40 AN EXAMINATION OF THE PASSAGES 

Mark concludes his book by making Jesus to say to his disciples 
chap. 16, v. 15. " Go ye into all the World and preach the Gos- 
w pel to every creature — he that believeth and is Baptised shall be 
* saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned, (fine popish 
" stuff this) and these signs shall follow them that believe ; in my 
"name they shall cast out devils j they shall speak with new 
,f tongues — (hey shall take up serpents, and if they drink any 
" deadly thing it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the 
" sick and they shall recover." 

Now, the bishop, in order to know if he has all this saving and 
wonder-working faith, should try those things upon himself. He 
should take a good dose of arsenick, and, if he please, I will send 
him a rattle-snake from America ; as for myself, as I believe in God 
and not at all in Jesus Christ, nor in the books called the scrip- 
tures, the experiment does not concern me. 

I pass on to the book of Luke. 

There are no passages in Luke called prophesies excepting those 
which relate to the passages I have already examined. 

Luke speaks of Mary being espoused to Joseph, but he makes 
no references to the passage in I-aiah, as Matthew does. He 
speaks also of Jesus riding into Jerusalem upon a colt, but he says 
nothing about a prophecy. He speak ^ of John the baptist, and 
refers to the passage in Isaiah of which I have already spoken. 

At the 13 chap. v. 31, he says, " The same day there came cer<* 
"tain of the Pharisees, saying unto Jews, get thee out and depart 
" hence, for Herod mil kill thee — and he said unto them, go ye, and 
11 tell that Fox, behold I cast out denU and 1 do cures to-day and to- 
" morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected" 

Matthew makes Herod to die whilst Christ was a child in 
Egypt, and makes Joseph to return with the child on the news of 
Herod's death who had sought to kill him, Luke makes Herod to 



{N THE NEW TESTAMENT. 41 

be living and to seek the life of Jesus after Jesus was thirty years 
of age ; for he says, chap. 3, v. 23, " And Jesus began to be a- 
'* bout thirty years of age, being, as was supposed, the son of Jo- 
" seph." 

The obscurity in which the historical part of the New-Testa- 
ment is involved with respect to Herod, may afford to priests and 
commentators a plea, which to some mav appear plausible, but to 
none satisfactory, that the Herod of which Matthew speaks, and 
the Herod of which Luke speaks, were different persons. Mat- 
thew calls Herod a king ; and Luke, chap. 3, v. 1, calls Herod 
Tetrach, (that is, Governor) of Galilee. But there could be no 
such person as a king Herod, because the Jews and their country 
.were then under the dominion of the Roman Emperors who go- 
verned then by Tetraehs, or Governors, 

Luke, chap. 2, makes Jesus to be born when Cyreneuswas go- 
vernor of Syria, to which government Judea was annexed ; and ac- 
cording to this, Jesus was not born in the time of Herod. Luke 
says nothing about Herod seeking the life of Jesus when he was 
born ; nor of his destroying the children under two years old ; nor 
of Joseph fleeing with Jesus into Egypt; nor of his returning from 
thence. On the contrary the book of Luke speaks as if the person 
it calls Christ had never been out of Judea, and that Herod sought 
his life after he commenced preaching as is before stated. I have 
already shewn thatLuke,in the book called the Acts of theAposiles, 
(which commentators ascribe to Luke) contradicts the account in 
Matthew, with respect to Judas and the thirty pieces of silver. 
Matthew says that Judas returned the money, and that the high 
priests bought with it afield to bury strangers in ; Luke says, that 
Judas kept the money and bought a field with it for himself. 

A6 it is impossible the wisdom of God should err, so it is impos- 
sible those books could have beer, written by divide inspiration . 



42 AN EXAMINAON OF THE PASSAGES 

Our belief in God and his unerring wisdom forbids us to believe kt 
As for myself I feel religiously happy in the total disbelief of it. 

There are no other passages called prophecies in Luke than 
those I have spoken of. I pass on to the book of John. 



The Book of John. 

JOHN, like Mark and Luke, is not much of a prophecy^ 
monger. He speaks of the ass, and the casting lots for Jesus's 
clothes, and some other trifles, of which I have already spoken. 

John makes Jesus to say, chap. 5, v. 46, f For had ye believed 
" Moses ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me.'* The book 
of the Acts, in speaking of Jesus, says, chap. 3, v. 22, " For Mo~ 
" ses truly said unto the fathers, a prophet shall the Lord your God 
" raise up unto you, of your brethren, like unto me, him shall ye 
l< hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you." 

This passage is in Deuteronomy, chap. 18, v. 15. They apply 
it as a prophecy of Jesus. What imposition I The person spoken 
©f in Deuteronomy, and also in numbers' where the same person 
is also spoken of, is Joshua, the minister of Moses, and his imme- 
diate successor, and just such another Robespierrean character as 
Moses is represented to have been. The case, as related in those 
books, is as follows ': 

Moses was grown old and near to his end, and in order to pre- 
vent confusion after his death, for the Israeliteshad no settled sys- 
tem of government ; it was thought best to nominate a successor 
to Moses whilst he was yet living. This was done, as we are told, 
in the following manner : 

Numbers, chap. 27, v. 12. " And the Lord said unto Moses, 
" ge,t thee up into this mount Abarim, and see the land which I 



IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 43 

*< have given unto the children oflsrae! — and when thou hast seen 
" it, thou also shall be gathered unto thy people as Aaron thy bro- 
" ther is gathered, v. 15, And Moses spake unto the Lord, saying 
*' —Let the Lord, the God of the spirits of all flesh, set a man 
" over the congregation.— Which may go out before them, and 
" which may go in before them, and which may lead them out, 
" and which may bring them in, that the congregation of the Lord 
" be not as sheep that have no shepherd. — And the Lord said unto 
f Moses, take thee Joshua, the son of Nun, a man in whom is the 
*' spirit, and lay thine hand upon him-~-and set him before Eleazer 
" the priest, and before all thecorgregation,and give him a charge 
" in their sight — and thou shall put some of thine honor upon him, 
el that all the congregation of the children of Israel may be obedi- 
" ent. — v. 22, and Moses did as the Lord commanded, and he 
" took Joshua, and set him before Eleazer the priest, and before 
u all the congregation ; and he laid hands upon him, and gave him 
" charge as the Lord commanded by the hand of Moses." 

I have nothing to do, in this place, with the truth, or the con- 
juration, here practised, of raising up a successor to Moses like 
unto himself. The passage sufficiently proves it is Joshua, and 
that it is an imposition in John, to make the case into a prophesy 
of Jesus. But the prophesy-mongers were so inspired with false- 
hood that they never speak truth.* 

* Newton, Bishop of Bristol in England, published a work in 
three volumes entitled *' Dissertations on the Prophesies,' 1 The 
work is tediously written and tiresome to read. He strains hard 
to make every passage into a prophesy that suits his purpose. — 
Among others, he makes this expression ot Moses, " the Lord 
shall raise thee up a prophet like unto me," into a prophesy of 
Christ, who was not born, according to the bible chronologies till 
fifteen hundred and fifty- two years after the time of Moses, whereas 
it was an immediate successor to Moses who was then near his 
end, that is spoken of in the passage above quoted. 

This bishop, the better to impose this passage on the world as a 
prophesy of Christ, has entirely omitted the account in the book 
of Numbers which I have given at length word for word, and 



-44 AN EXAMINATION OF THE PASSAGES 

I pass on to the last passage in these fables of the Evangelists, 
called a prophesy of Jesus Christ. 

John having spoken of Jesus expiring on the cross between two 
thieves, says, chap. 19, v. 32. " Then came the soldiers and brake 
M the legs of the first (meaning one of the thieves) and of the other 
*' which was crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus 
"' and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs — v. 
" 36, for these things were done that the scripture should be ful- 
" filled. A bone of him shall not be broken." 

which shews beyond the possibility of a doubt that the person 
spoken of by Moses is Joshua and no other person. 

Newton is but a superficial writer. He takes up things upon 
hear-say and inserts them without either examination or reflection, 
and the more extraordinary and incredible they are, the better he 
likes them. 

In speaking of the Walls of Babylon, (volume the first, page 
263) he makes a quotation from a traveller of the name of Taver- 
nur, whom he calls (by way of giving credit to what he says) a 
celebrated traveller, that those walls mere made of burnt brick, ten 
feet square and three feet thick—It Newton had only thought of 
calculating the weight of such a brick, he would have seen the 
impossibility of their being used or even made. A brick ten feet 
square and three feet thick contains 300 cubic feet, and allowing a 
cubic foot ofbirck to be only one hundred pounds, each of the 
bishop's bricks would weigh 30,000 pounds ; and it would take- 
about thirty cart loads of clay (one horse carts) to make one- 
brick. 

But his account of the stones used in the building of Solomon's 
temple (volume 2d. page 211) far exceeds his bricks of ten foot 
square in the walls of Babylon ; these are but brick-bats com- 
pared to them. 

The stones (says he) employed in the foundation, were in magni- 
tude fortv cubits, that is, above sixty feet, a cubit, says he*, being 
somewhat more than one toot and a half, (a cubit is one foot nine 
inches) and the superstructure (says this bishop) was worthy of 
such foundations. There were some stones, says he, of the whitest 
marble forty-five cubits long, five cubits high, and six cubits broad. 
These are the dimensions tins bishop has given, which in measure 
of twelve inches loa foot, is. 7 8 feet 9 inches long, ten feet 6 inches 
broad and eight feet three inches thick, and contains 7,234 cubic 
feet, I now go to demonstrate the imposition of this bishop. 



IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 43 

The passage here referred to is in Exodus, and has no more to 
do with Jesus than with the ass he rode upon to Jerusalem ; nor 
yet so much, if a roasted jack-ass, like a roasted he-goat might be 
eaten at a Jewish passover. It might be some consolation to an 
ass to know, that though his bones might be picked, they would 
not be broken, I go to state the case. 

The book of Exodus in instituting the Jewish passover, h\ 
which they were to eat an he-lamb, or a he-goat, says chap. 12, v. 
5*. " Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year ; 
" ye shall take it from the sheep or from the goats." 

The book, after stating some ceremonies to be used in killing 
and dressing it (for it was to be roasted, not boiled) says, v. 43. 

A cubic foot of water weighs sixty-two pounds and an half. — 
The specific gravity of marble to water is as 2 1-2 is to one. The 
weight therefore of a cubit foot of marble is 156 pounds, which, 
multiplied by 7,234, the number of cubic feet in one of those 
stones makes the weight of it to be 1,128,504 pounds, which is 503 
tons' Allowing then a horse to draw about half a ton, it will 
require a thousand horses to draw one such stone on the ground, 
how then were they to be lifted into a budding by human hands* 
The bishop may talk of faith removing mountains, but all the 
faith of all the bishops that ever lived could not remove one of 
those stones and their bodily strength given in. 

This bishop also tells of great guns used by the Turks at the 
taking of Constantinople, one of which, he says, was drawn bv 
seventy yoke of oxen and by two thousand men. Volume 3, page 
117. 

The weight of a cannon that carries a ball of 48 pounds, which 
is the largest cannon that are cast, weighs 8,000 pounds, about 
three tons and a half, and may be drawn by three yoke of oxen. 
Any body may now calculate what the weight of the bishop's 
great gtin must be that required seventy yoke of oxen to draw it. 
This bishop beats Gulliver. 

When men give up the use of the divine gift of reason in writ- 
ing on any subject, be it religion or any thing else ; there are n& 
bounds to their extravagance, no limit to their absurdities. 

The three volumes which this bishop has written on what he 
ealls the prophesies contain above onethousand two hundred page?, 
and he says in volume 3, page 1 17, * / have studied brevity.'* — 
This is as marvellous as the bishop's great gun. 



4'fr AN EXAMINATION OF THE PASSSAGE 

" And the Lord said unto Moses ind Aaron, This is the ordt^ 
'''nance of the passover. There shall no stranger eat thereof. 
*' But every man's servant that is bought for money, when thou 
"hast circumcised him, then shall he eat thereof. A foreigner 
" shall not eat thereof. — In one house shall it be eaten ; thou shalt 
" not cajry forth ought of the flesh thereof abroad out of the 
house ; Neither shalt thou break a bone thereof.'* 

We here see that the case as it stands in Exodus, is a ceremony 
arid not a prophesy; and totally unconnected with Jesus's bones 
«r any part of hinu 

John having thus filled up the measure of apostolic fable, con- 
cludes his book with something that beats all fable ; for he says at 
the last verse, «and there are also many other things which Jesus 
" did, the which if they should be written every one, / suppose 
li ihat even the world itself could not contain the books that should 
hewrittenV* 

This is what in vulgar life is called a Thumper, that is, not only 
a lie, but a lie beyond the line of possibility ; besides which, it 
is an absurdity, for if they should be written in the world, the 
world could contain them. — Here ends the examination of the 
passages called prophesies. 

I have now, reader, gone through, and examined, all the pas- 
sages which the four books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John 
quote from the Old Testament, and call them prophecies of Jesus 
Christ. When I first set down to this examination, I expected to 
find cause for some censure, but little did I expect to find them so 
utterly destitute of truth, and of all pretensions to it, as I have 
shewn them to be. 

The practice which the writers of those books employ is not 
moie false than it is absurd. They state some trifling case of the 
person they call Jesus Christ, and then cut oul a sentence from 



IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 47 

some passage of the Old Testament and call it a prophecy of that 
case. But when the words thus cut out are restored to the place 
they are taken from, and read with the words before and after them, 
they give the lie to the New Testament. A short instance or 
two of this will suffice for the whole. 

They make Joseph to dream of an angel who informs him that 
Herod is dead, and tells him to come with the child out of Egypt. 
They then cut out a sentence from the book of Hosea, Out of 
Egypt have I called my Son, and apply it as a prophesy in that 
case. 

The words, " And called my Son out of E^ypt" are in the bible. 
But what of that ? They are only part of a passage and not a 
whole passage, and stand immediately connected wilh other words 
which shew they refer to the children of Israel coming out of 
Egypt in the time of Pharoah, and to the idolatry they committee? 
afterwards. 

Again, they tell us that when the soldiers came to break the legs 
©f the crucified persons, they found Jesus was already dead, and 
therefore did not break his. They then, with some alteration of 
the original, cut out a sentence from Exodus, a bone of him shall- 
not be broken, and apply it as a prophesy of that case. 

The words, " Neither shall ye break a bone thereof," (for they 
have altered the text) are in the bible. But what of that ? They 
are, as in the former case, only part of a passage, and not a whole 
passage, and when read with the words they are immediately 
joined to, shew it is the bones of a he-lamb, or a he-goat of which 
the passage speaks. 

These repeated forgeries and falsifications create a well-founded 
suspicion, that all the cases spoken of concerning the person 
called Jesus Christ are made cases, on purpose to lug in, and that 
very clumsily, some broken sentences from the old testament,, and 



46 AN EXAMINATION O* THE PASSAGES 

apply them as prophesies of those cases ; and that so far from his 
being the Son of God, he did not exist even as a man — that he is 
merely an imaginary or allegorical character, as Apollo, Hercules, 
Jupiter, and all the Deities of Antiquity were. There is no his- 
story written at the time Jesus Christ is said to have lived, that 
speaks of the existence of such a person even as a man. 

Did we find in any other book, pretending to give a system of 
religion, the falshoods, falsifications, contradictions and absurdi- 
ties, which are to be met with in almost every page of the Old and 
New Testament, all the priests of the present day, who supposed 
themselves capable, would triumphantly shew their skill in criti- 
cism, and cry it down as a most glaring imposition. But since the 
books in question belong to their own trade and profession, they, 
or at least many of them, seek to stifle every enquiry into them, 
and abuse those who have the honesty and the courage to do it. 

When a book, as is the case with the Old and New Testament, 
is ushered into the world under the title of being the word 01 
God, it ought to be examined with the utmost strictness, in order 
to know if it has a well founded claim to that title, or not, and 
whether we are, or are not, imposed upon ; for as no poison is so 
dangerous as that which poisons the physic, so no falsnood is s« 
fatal as that which is made an article of faith. 

This examination becomes the more necessary, because when 
the New Testament was written, I might say invented, the art 
of printing was not known, and there were no other copies of 
the Old Testament than written copies. A written copy of that 
book would cost about as much as six hundred common printed 
bibles now cost. Consequently the book was in the hands but of 
very few persons, and these chiefly of the church. This gave an 
opportunity to the writers of the New Testament to make quota- 
lions from the Old Testament as they pleased, and call them pro- 
phesies with very little danger of being detected. Besides which, 
fte terrors and inquisitorial fury of the church, like what they tell 



Stt THE NEW TESTAMENT. 4*9 

us of the flaming sword that turned everyway, stood century over 
the New-Testament ; and time, which brings every thing else to 
light, has served to thicken the darkness that guards it from detec- 
tion. 

Were the New-Testament now to appear for the first time, 
every priest of the present day, would examine it line by line, and 
compare the detached sentences it calls prophecies, with the 
whole passages in the Old Testament, from whence they are ta- 
taken. Why then do they not make the same examination, at 
this time as they would make, had the New-Testament never ap- 
peared before ? If it be proper and right to make it in one case, it 
is equally proper and right to do it in the other case. Length of 
time can make no difference in the right to do it at any time. But 
instead of doing this, they go on as their predecessors w r ent on be* 
fore them, to tell the people there are prophecies of Jesus Christ, 
when the truth is, there are none. 

They tell us that Jesus rose from the dead, and ascended into 
heaven. It is very easy to say so, a great lie is as easily told as a 
little one. But if he had done so, those would" have been the only 
circumstances respecting him, that would have differed from the 
common lot of man : and consequently, the only case that would 
apply exclusively to him, as prophecy, would be some passage in 
the Old-Testament that foretold such things of him. But there is 
not a passage in the Old-Testament that speaks of a person who 
after being Crucified, dead, and buried, should rise from the dead 
and ascend into heaven. Our prophecy-mongers supply the si- 
lence, the Old-Testament guards upon such things, by telling us o£ 
passages they call prophecies, and that falsely so, about Joseph's 
dreams, old cloaths, broken bones, and suchlike trifling stuff. 

In writing upon this, as upon every other subject, I speak a lan- 
guage full and intelligible. I deal not in hints and intimations. — 
I have several reasons for this : First, that I may be clearly under- 

H 



50 AN EXAMINAON ©F THE PASSAGES 

stood. Secondly, that it may be seen I am in earnet, and thirdly^, 
because it is an affront to truth to treat falsehood with complai- 
sance. 

I will close this treatise with a subject I have already touched 
upon^in the first part of the Age of Reason. 

The world has been amused with the term, revealed religion, 
and the generality of priests apply this term to the books called 
the Old and New Testament. The Mahometans apply the same 
term to the Koran. There is no man that believes in revealed 
religion stronger than I do ; but it is not the reveries of the Old 
and New Testament, nor of the Koran, that I dignify with that 
sacred title. That which is revelation to me exists in something 
which no human mind can invent ; no human hand can counter- 
feit or alter. 

The word of God is the Creation we behold ; and this word of 
God revealeth to man all that is necessary for man to know of his 
creator. 

Do we Want to contemplate his power ? we see it in tRe im- 
mensity of his creation. 

Do we want to contemplate his wisdom ? we see it in the 
unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible whole is 
governed. 

Do we waii t to contemplate his munificence ? we see it in the 
abundance with which he fills the earth. 

Do we want to contemplate his mercy ? we see it in his not 
Withholding that abundance, even from the unthankful. 

Do we want to contemplate his will so far as it respects man * 
The goodness he shews to all, is a lesson for our conduct to each 
other. 



IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 51 

in fine, do we want to know what God is ? Search, not the 
hook called the scripture, which any human hand might make, or 
,any impostor invent; but the scripture called the Cre- 
ation. 

When, in the first part of the Age of Reason, I called die cre- 
ation the true revelation of God to man, I did not know that any 
other person had expressed the same idea. But I lately met with 
the writings of Doctor Conyers Middleton, published the beg'm* 
ning of last century, in which he expresses himself in the same 
manner, with respect to the creation, as I have done in the Age 
®f Reason. 

He was principal librarian of the university of Cambridge, m 
England, which furnished him with extensive opportunities of 
reading, and necessarily required he should be well acquainted 
with the dead as well as the living languages. He was a man of 
a strong original mind ; had the courage to think for himself, and 
the honesty to speak his thoughts. 

He made a journey to Rome., from whence he wrote letters to 
shew that the forms and ceremonies of the Romish Christian 
Church, were taken from the degenerate state of the heathen 
mythology, as it stood in the latter times of the Greeks and Ro- 
mans. He attacked, without ceremony, the miracles which the 
church pren tended to perform ; and in one of his treatises he calls 
the creation a revelation. The priests of England, of that day, 
in order to defend their citadel, by first defending its out-works, 
attacked him for attacking the Romish ceremonies ; and one of 

them censures him for calling the creation a revelation. He thus 
replies to him : 

"One of them, says he, appears to be scandalized by the title 
" of revelation, which I have given to that discovery which God 
f made of himself, in the visible works of his creation. Yet it is 
K no other than what the wise, in all ages, have given to it; wfco 



52' AN EXAMI.NATIQJT ©F THE PASSSAGE 

r/ consider it as the most authentic and indisputable revelatioR 
* which God has ever given of himself, from the beginning of the 
" world to this day. It was this by which the first notice of hina 
" was revealed to the inhabitants of the earth, and by which alone 
" it has been kept up ever since, among the several nations of it, 
*' From this the reason of man was enabled to trace out his nature 
" and attributes, and by a gradual deduction of consequences, to 
" Jearn his own nature also, with all the duties belonging to it, 
" which relate either to God, or to his fellow creatures. This 
'* constitution of things was ordained by God, as an universal 
m - law or rule of conduct to man ; the source of all his knowledge ; 
5' the test of all truth, by which all subsequent revelations, which 
" are supposed to have been given by God in any other manner, 
*' must be tried and cannot be received as divine, any further than 
'•' as they are found to tally and coincide with this original standard. 

" It was this divine law, which I referred to in the passage 
" above recited, (meaning the passage on which they had attacked 
" him) being desirous to excite the readers attention to it, as it 
tc would enable him to judge more freely of the argument I was 
u handling. For by contemplating this law, he would discover 
" the genuine way, which God himself has marked out to lis, for 
ct the acquisition of true knowledge ; not from the authority or 
" reports of our fellow creatures, but from the information of the 
f( facts, and material objects, which in his providential distribu- 
" tion of worldly things, he hath presented to the perpetual ob< 
f* servation of our senses. For as it was from these that his exist- 
ence and nature, the most important articles of all knowledge, 
" were first discovered to man, so that grand discovery furnished 
Ci new light towards tracing out the rest, and made all the infe- 
«' rior subjects of human knowledge, more easily discoverable t© 
" us by the same method. 

"I had another view likewise in the same passages, and appli- 
* cable to the same end, of giving the reader a more enlarge^ 



IN" THE NEW TESTAMENT ,5,3 

'" notion ef the question in dispute, who, by turning his thoughts 
"to reflect on the works of the Creator, as they are manifested 
«' to us in this fabric of the world, could not fail to observe, that 
" they are all of them great, noble, and suitable to the majesty of 
'* his nature ; carrying with them the proofs of their origin, and 
^'shewing themselves to be the productions of an all-wise and 
tr allmighty Being : and by accustoming his mind to these sublime 

* reflections, he will be prepared to determine whether those 
" miraculous interpositions so confidently affirmed to us by the 
w primitive fathers, can reasonably be thought to make a part in 
** the grand scheme of the Divine administration, or whether it 

* be agreeable, that God, who created all things by his will, 
«* and can give what turn to them he pleases by the same wilt 
"should, for the particular purposes of his government and the 

'"*■ services of the church, descend to the low expedient of visions 
" and revelations, granted sometimes to boys for the instruction of 
" the elders, and sometimes to women to settle the fashion and 
*' length of their veils, and sometimes to Pastors of the Church,, 
"to enjoin them to ordain one man a lecturer, another a priest; 
" or that he should scatter a profusion of miracles around the 
" stake of a martyr, yet all of them vain and insignificant, and 
"without any sensible effect either of preserving the life, or 
" easing the sufferings of the saint, or even of mortifying his 

* persecutors, who were always left to enjoy the full triumph 

* of their cruelty, and the poor martyr to expire in a 

* miserable death. When these things, I say, are brought to 
" the originaftest, and compared with the genuine and indisput^ 
"able works of the Creator; how minute, how trifling, how 
*' contemptible must they be ? And how incredible must it be. 
A thought, that, for the instruction of his Church, God should 
"employ ministers so precarious, unsatisfactory and inade- 
** quate, as the extacies of women and boys, and the visions of 
s< interested priests ; w r hich were derided at the very time by 
u men of sense, to whom they were proposed, 



3* AN EXAMINATION OF THE PASSAGES 

(i That this universal law, (continues Middleton, meaning 
n the law revealed in the works of the creation) was actually 
et revealed to the heathen world, long before the gospel was 
ie known, we learn from all the principle sages of antiquity who 
"made it the capital subject of their studies and writings. 

" Cicero, (says Middleton) has given us a short abstract of it, 
"in a fragment still remaining, from one of his books on govern- 
"ment, which, (says Middleton) I shall here transcribe in his 
" own words, as they will illustrate my sense also, in the passages 
*' that appear so dark and dangerous to my antagonists. 

"The true law (it is Cicero who speaks) is right reason, con- 
formable to the nature of things, constant, eternal, diffused 
through all, which calls us to duty by commanding; deters us 
from sin by forbid ing; which never loses its influence with the 
^ood ; nor ever preserves it with the wicked. This law cannot 
t>e over-ruled by any other, nor abrogated in whole, or in part c. 
nor can we be absolved from it, either by the senate or by the 
people; nor are we to seek any other comment, or interpreter of 
it but itself : nor can there be one law at Rome, and another at 
Athens; one now and another hereafter; but the same eternal 
immutable law comprehends all nations, at all times, under one 
common master and governor of allr—Goo. He is the inventor, 
propounder, enactor of this law ; and whoever will npt obey k, 
must first renounce himself, and throw off the nature of man ; by 
doing which, he will sutler the greatest punishments though he 
should escape all the other torments which are commonly believed 
to be prepared for the wicked," Here ends the quotation from 
Cicero. 

" Our Doctors, (continues Middleton) perhaps will look on all 
** this as hank deism ; but let them call it what they will, I 
ff shall ever avow and defend it as the fundamental, essential, 
" and vital part of all true religion," Here ends the quotation 
from Middleton.. 



IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 55 

I hate here given the reader two sublime extracts from mer* 
who lived in ages of time, far remote from each other, but who 
thought alike. Cicero lived before the time in which they tell u& 
Christ was born. Middleton may be called a man of our own time 
as he lived within the same century with ourselves. 

In Cicero we see that vast superiority of mind, that sublimity of 
right reasoning, and justness of ideas, which man acquires, not by 
studying bibles and testaments, and the theology of schools built 
thereon,but by studying the creator in the immensity and unchange- 
able order of his creation, and the immutability of his law 
* There cannot" says Cicero " be one law now, and another here*, 
" after ; but the same eternal immutable law comprehends all nations v 
" at all times, under one common mdster and governor of all, God." 
But according to the doctrine of schools which priests have set up, 
we see one law called the Old Testament, given in one age of the 
world, and another law called the New Testament, given in ano- 
ther age of the world. As all this is contradictory to the eternal 
immutable nature, and the unerring and unchangeable wisdom of 
God, we must be compelled to hold this doctrine to be false, 
and the old and the new law, called the Old and the New Testa- 
ment, to be impositions, fables, sad forgeries, 

In Middleton, we see the manly eloquence of an enlarged mini/ 
^nd the genuine sentiments of a true believer in his Creator. In- 
stead of reposing his faith on books, by whatever name they may 
be called, whether Old Testaments or New, he fixes the creation 
as the great original standard by which every other thing called 
the word, or work of God, is to be tried. In this we have an in- 
disputable scale whereby to measure every word or work imputed 
to him. If the thing so imputed carries not in itself the evidence 
of the same Almightiness of power, of the same unerring truth and 
wisdom, and the same unchangeable order in all its parts, as are 
visibly demonstrated to our senses, and comprehensible by our rea* 
r>tn^ in. the magnificent fabric ©f ftje universe, £hat word or fet 



5£* AN EXAMINATION OP THE PASSAGED 

work is not of God. Let then the two books called the old and 
new Testament be tried by this rule, and the result will be, that 
the authors of them, whoever they were, will be convicted of for- 
gery. 

The invariable principles, and unchangeable order, which re* 
gulate the movements of all the parts that compose the universe, 
demonstrate both to our senses and our reason that its creator is a 
God of unerring truth. But the Old Testament, beside the num- 
berless absurd and bagatelle stories it tells of God, represents hint 
as a God of deceit, a God not to be confided in. Ezekiel makes 
God to say, chap. 1 A-, v. 9, " and if the prophet be deceived when 
* he hath spoken a thing, /, the Lord have deceived that prophet." 
And at the 20th chap. v. 25, he makes God, in speaking of the 
Children of Israel to say, <e Wherefore I gave them statutes that 
" were not good, and judgements by which they could not live." 
This, so far from being the word of God, is horrid blasphemy a- 
gainsthim. Reader, put thy confidence in thy God, and put no 
trust in the bible. 

The same old Testament after telling us that God created the 
heavens and the earth in six days, makes the same almighty pow- 
er and eternal wisdom employ itself in giving directions how a 
priest's garments should be cut, and what sort of stuff they should 
be made of, and what their offerings should be, Gold and Silver 
and Brass, and blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linnen, and 
goats hair and rams skins died red, and badger skins, &c. &c„ 
chap. 25, v. 3. and in one of the pretended prophecies I have 
just examined God is made to give directions how they should kill, 
cook, and eat a he-lamb or a he-goat. And Ezekiel, Chap. 4, to. 
fill up the measure of abominable absurdity, makes God to order 
him to take " zvheat, and barley, and beans, and lentilcs, and milkt, 
f e and fitches ana make a loaf or a cake thereof, and bake it with hu- 
" man dung and eat it;" but as Ezekiel complained that this mess 



IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 5? 

was too strong for his stomach, the matter was compromised from 
man's dung to cow-dung, Ezekiel, chap. 4. Compare all this 
ribaldry, blasphemously called the word of God, with the Almigh- 
ty power that created the universe, and whose eternal wisdom 
directs and governs all its mighty movements, and we shall be at a 
loss to find a name sufficiently contemptible for it. 

In the promises which the Old Testament pretends that God 
made to his people, the same derogatory ideas of him prevail. It 
makes God to promise to Abraham, that his seed should be like the 
stars in heaven, and the sand on the sea shore, for multitude, and 
that he would give them the land of Canaan as their inheritance 
forever. But observe, reader, how the performance of this pro- 
mise was to begin, and then ask thine own reason, if the wisdom oi 
God, whose power is equal to his will, could, consistently with 
that power and that wisdom, make such a promise. 

The performance of the promise was to begin, according to that 
book, by four hundred years of bondage and affliction. Genesis, 
cap. 15 v. 13, " And God said unto Abraham, know of a surety 
" that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs 9 and shall 
* 6 serve them and they shall afflict them/our hundred years." This pro- 
mise then to Abraham, and his seed forever, to inherit the land of 
Canaan,had it been a fact instead of a fable, was to operate, in the 
commencement of it, as a curse upon all the people and their chil- 
dren, and their children's childeren for four hundred years. 

But the case is, the book of Genesis was written after the 
bondage in Egypt had taken place ; and in order to get rid of 
the disgrace of the Lord's chosen people, as they called themselves, 
being in bondage to the Gentiles, they make God to be the author 
of it, and annex it as a condition to a pretended promise ; as if 
God, in making that promise, had exceeded his power in per- 
forming it, and consequently his wisdom in making it, and was 



d& AN EXA.MINAON OF THE PASSAGES 

obliged to compromise with them for one half, and with the Egyp* 
tians, to whom they were to be in bondage, for the other half. 

Without degrading my own reason by bringing those wretched 
and contemptible tales into a comparative view, with the Al- 
mighty power and eternal wisdom, which the Creator hath de- 
monstrated to our senses in the creation of the universe, I will 
confine myself to say, that if we conpare them with the divine 
and forcible sentiments of Cicero, the result will be, that the hu- 
man mind has degenerated by believing them. Man, in a state 
of groveling superstition, from which he has not courage to rise, 
loses the energy of his mental powers. 

I will not tire the reader with more observations on the Old 
Testament. 

As fo the New Testament, if it be brought and tried by that 
standard which, as Middleton wisely says, God has revealed to 
our senses,of his Almighty power and wisdom, in the creation and 
government of the visible universe, k will be found equally as 
false, paltry, and absurd, as the Old. 

Without entering, in this place, into any other argument, that 
the story of Christ is of human invention and not of divine origin, 
I will confine myself to shew that it is derogatory to God, by the 
contrivance of it ; because the means it supposes God to use, are 
not adequate to the end to be obtained ; and, therefore, are dero- 
gatory to the Almightiness of his power, and the eternity of his 
ivisdom. 

The New Testament supposes that God sent his son upon 
earth fo make anew covenant with man, which the Church calls 
the covenant of grace, and to instruct mankind in a new doctrine, 
which it calls Faith, meaning thereby, not faith in God, for Cicero 
and all true Deists, always had, and always will have, this; but 
faith in the person called Jesus Christ, and that whoever had not 



IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 5.9 



this faith should, to use the words of the New Testament, be 
DAMNED. 

Now if this were a fact, it is consistent with that attribute of 
God, called his goodness, that no time should be lost in letting 
poor unfortunate man know it; and as that goodness was united 
to Almighty power, and that power to Almighty wisdom, all the 
means existed in the hand of the Creator, to make it known im- 
mediately over the whole earth, in a manner suitable to the Almigh- 
tiness of his divine nature, and with evidence that would not 
leave man in doubt; for it is always incumbent upon us, in all 
cases, to believe that the Almighty always acts, not by imperfect 
means as imperfect man acts, but consistently with his Almighty- 
ness. It is this only that can become the infallible criterion by 
which we can possibly distinguish the works of God from the 
works of man. 

Observe now Reader, how the comparison between this sup- 
posed mission of Christ, on the belief, or disbelief, of which they 
say, man was to be saved or Damned — observe, I say, how the com* 
parison between this and the Almighty power and wisdom of God 
demonstrated to our senses in the visible creation, goes on. 

The Old Testament tells us that God created the heavens and 
the earth, and every thing therein, in six days. The term six days, 
is ridiculous enough when applied to God; but leaving out that 
absurdity, it contains the idea of Almighty power, acting unitedly 
with Almighty wisdom, to produce an immense work, that of the 
creation of the universe, and every thing therein, in a short 
time. 

Now as the eternal salvation of man, is of much greater impor- 
tance than his creation, and as that salvation depends, as the New- 
Testament tells us, on man's knowledge of; and belief in the person 
called Jesus Christ, it necessarily follows from our belief in the 
goodness and justice of God, and our knowledge of his Almighty 



6® AN EXAMINATION OF THE PASSAGES 

power and wisdom, as demonstrated in the creation, that all i his 
if true, would be made known to all parts of the world, in as little 
time, at least, as was employed in making the World. To sup- 
pose the Almighty, would pay greater regard and attention to the 
creation and organization of inanimate matter, than he would to 
the salvation of innumerable millions of souls, which himself had 
created, "as the image ofhimslfh to offer an insult to his goodness 
and his justice. 

Now observe Reader, how the promulgation, of this pretended 
salvation by a knowledge of, and a belief in Jesus Christ went on 
compared with the work of creation. 

fn the first place, it took longer time to make the child 
than to make the world, for nine months were passed a- 
way and totally lost, in a state of pregnancy ; which is more 
than forty times longer time, than God employed in making the 
world, according to the bible account. Secondly ; several years 
of Christ's life were lost in a state of human infancy. Rut the 
universe was in maturity the moment it existed. Thirdly ; Christ, 
as Luke asserts, was thirty years old before he began to preach 
what they call his mission. Millions of souls died in the mean 
time without knowing it. Fourthly ; it was above three hundred 
years from that time before the book called the New Testament 
was compiled into a written copy, before which time there were 
no such book. Fifthly ; it was above a thousand years after that, 
before it could be circulated ; because neither Jesus nor his apostles 
had knowledge of, or were inspired with, the art of printing : 
and consequently, as the means for making it universally known 
did not exist, the means ware^not equal to the end, and therefore 
it is not the work of God. 

I will here subjoin the nineteenth Psalm, wl;ich is truly deistical, 
to shew how universally and instantaneously the works of God 
make themselves known, compared with this pretended salvation 
by Jesus Christ. 



IV THE NEW TESTAMENT. 61 

Fsalm 1 9th. <f The heavens declare the glory of God, and 
* the firmament sheweth his hand; -work — Day unto day uttereth 
" speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge — There is 
" no speech nor language where their voice is not heard — Their 
" line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the 
u end of the world. In them hath he set a chamber for the Sun. 
" Which is as a bride-groom coming out of his chamber, and 
** rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race — his going forth is 
" from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it, 
,e and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof." 

Now had the news of salvation by Jesus Christ been inscribed 
on the face of the Sun and the Moon, in characters that all nations 
would have understood, the whole earth had known it in twenty- 
four hours, and all nations would have believed it ; whereas, 
though it is now almost two thousand years since, as they tell 
us, Christ came upon earth, not a twentieth part of the people 
of the earth know any thing of it, and among those who do, the 
wiser part do not believe it. 

I have now reader, gone through all the passages called 
prophecies of Jesus Christ, and shewn there is no such thing. 

I have examined the story told of Jesus Christ, and compared 
the several circumstances of it with that revelation, which, as 
Middleton wisely says, God has made to us of his Power and 
Wisdom in the structure of the universe, and by which every 
thing ascribed to him is to be tried. The result is, that the story 
of Christ has not one trait, either in its character, or in the means 
employed, that bears the least resemblance to the power and 
wisdom of God, as demonstrated in the creation of the universe. 
All the means are human means, slow, uncertain and inadequate 
to the accomplishment of the end proposed, and therefore the 
whole is a fabulous invention, and undeserving of credit. 



G& AN EXAMINATION OF THE PASSAGES &C, 

The priests of the present day profess to believe it. They 
gain their living by it, and they exclaim against something they 
call infidelity. I will define what it is. Hb that e* lieve^s 

IN THE STORY OF CHRIST IS AN INFIDEL TO GoD. 

THOMAS PAINE. 




APPENDIX. 



My Private Thoughts of a Future 
State. 

I HAVE said in the first part of the Age of Reason, that " I 
hope for happiness after this life." This hope is comfortable to me, 
and I presume not to go beyond the comfortable idea of hope, 
with respect to a future state. 

I consider myself in the hands of my creator, and that he will 
dispose of me after this life, consistently with his justice and good- 
ness. I leave all these matters to him as my creator and friend, 
and I hold it to be presumption in man to make an article of faith 
as to what the creator will do with us hereafter. 

I do not believe because a man and a woman make a child., 
that it imposes on the creator, the unavoidable obligation of keep- 
ing the being so made in eternal existance hereafter. It is in his 
power to do so, or nbt to do so, and it is not in our power to de- 
cide which he will do. 

The book called the New-Testament, which I hold to be fa- 
bulous, and have shewn to be false, gives an account in the 25th 
chapter of Matthew, of what is there called the last day, or the day 
of judgment. The whole world according to that account is di- 
vided into two parts, the righteous and the unrighteous, figurative- 
ly called the sheep and the goats. They are then to receive their 
sentence. To the one, figuratively called the sheep, it says, "come 
ye blessed of my father inherit the kingdom prepared for you from 



APPENDIX. 

■Vie foundation of the world." To the other figuratively called the 
Goats, it says, n Depart from me yet cursed into everlasting fire 
prepared for the devil and his angels.'' 

Now the case is, the world cannot be thus divided— the moral 
world, like the physical world, is composed of numerous degrees 
of character, running imperceptibly one into the other, in such a 
manner that no fixed point of division can be found in either. That 
point is no where, or is every where. The whole world might 
be divided into two parts numerically, but not as to moral charac- 
ter; and therefore the metaphor of dividing them, as sheep and 
goats can be divided, whose difference is marked by their external 
figure, is absurd. All sheep are still sheep ; all goats are still goats ; 
it is their physical nature to be so. But one part of the world are 
not all good alike, nor the other part all wicked alike. There are 
some exceedingly good ; others exceedingly wicked. There is 
another description of men who cannot be ranked with either the 
one or the other — they belong neither to the sheep nor the goats 5 
and there is still another description of them, who are so very in- 
significant both in character and conduct as not to be worth the 
trouble of damning or saving, or of raising from the dead. 

v My own opinion is, that those whose lives have been spent in 
doing good, and endeavouring to make their lellow mortals happy, 
for this is the only way in which we can serve God, will be happy 
hereafter; and that the very wicked will meet with some punish- 
ment. But those who are neither good nor bad, or are too insig- 
nificant for notice, will be dropt entirely. This is my opinion. It 
is consistent with my idea of God's justice, and with the reason 
that God has given me, and I gratefully know he has given me a 

large share of that divine gift. _ . ,_ T ^ 

* THOMAS PAINE- 



CONTRADICTORY DOCTRINES 

IN THE 

New Testament, 

BETWEEN 

MATTHEW and MARK. 

IN the New Testament, Mark Chap. 16, v. 16, it is said* 
" lie that believelhand is baptised shall he saved ; but he that believ- 
** eth not shall be damned." — This is making salvation, or in other 
words, the happiness of man after this life, to depend entirely on 
believing, or on what christians call faith. 

But the 25 th Chapter of " Tlie gospel acccrr ding to Maliltjem? 
makes Jesus Christ to preach a direct contrary doctrine to " The 
" gospel according to Mark" for it makes salvation, or the future 
happiness of man, to depend entirely on good works, and those 
good works are not works done to God, for he needs them not, 
but good works done to man. 

The passage referred to in Matthew, is the account there given 
of what it calls the last day, or the day of judgment, where the 
Vyhole world is represented to be divided in!o two parts, the 
righteous and the unrighteous, " metaphorically called the Jieep 
and the goats. 

To the one part, called the righteous, or the sheep, it says, 
*' Come ye blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for 
" you from the beginning of" the world— for I was an hungered 

« and ye gave me meat — / zvas thirsty and ye gave me drink / 

" was a stranger and ye took me in — Naked and ye clothed me — / 
" was sick and ye visited me — / was in prison and ye came 
ie unto me. 

' Then shall the righteous answer him saying, Lord when. 
" saw we thee an hungered and fed thee, or thirsty and gave the^ 



CONTRADICTORY DOCTRINES, &c. 
t* drink— when saw we thee a stranger and took thee in, or naked 
" and clothed thee — ? or whe-n saw we th^e sick and in prison and 
P came unto thee. 

" And the king shall answer and say unto them, verity^! say 
si unto you, in as much as ye have done it unto one of the least of 
€t these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." 

Here is nothing about believing in Christ; nothing about tha t 
phantom of the imagination, called Faith. The works here spoken 
of, are works of humanity and benevolence, or in other words, 
an endeavour to make God's creation happy. Here is nothing 
about preaching and making long prayers, as if God must be die- 
tated toby man; nor about building churches and meetings, nor 
hiring priests to pray and preach in them. Here is nothing about 
predestination, that lust which some men have for damning one 
another. Here is nothing about baptism, whether by sprinkling 
or plunging, nor about any of those ceremonies for which the 
christian church has been fighting, persecuting, and burning each 
other, ever since the christian church began. 

If it be asked, why do not priests preach the doctrine contained 
in this chapter ? The answer is easy : .they are not fond of prac- 
tising it themselves. It does not answer for their trade. They 
had rather get than give. Charity, with them, begins and ends 
at hcrne^ 

Had it been said. Come ye blessed, ye have been liberal in paying 
the preachers of the word ; ye have contributed largely towards 
building churches and meeting-houses, there is not a hired priest in 
Christendom but would have thundered it continually in the ears 
of his congregation. But as it is altogether on^ood works done 
to men, the priests pass it over in silence, and they will abuse me 
for bringing it into notice. THOMAS PAINE. 

ERRATUM. 

. In page 6, second paragraph, instead of the 36th chap. ofEccIe- 
siasticus,-read 34-th chap, 



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